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Balancing traffic is cheap
A load balancer mostly forwards traffic, so it doesn’t need much RAM. HAProxy and Nginx run comfortably on a 1GB VPS, and the real requirement is reliable bandwidth and uptime.
Specs that matter
- Low-latency network to keep round-trips short
- Dedicated IPv4 for the frontend address
- Full root access for sysctl tuning and TLS config
- Enough ports for health checks and backends
A minimal HAProxy start
sudo apt update && sudo apt install haproxy
Configure a backend block with your app servers, add a health check, and reload. Because the balancer sits in front of everything, it’s worth running it on a separate cheap VPS rather than sharing a box with your app.