What is a major benefit of load balancing in OCI?

Load balancing in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) plays a vital role in managing incoming traffic to applications by distributing requests among multiple back-end servers. This distribution ensures that no single server becomes overwhelmed with too much traffic, which can lead to performance degradation, downtime, or even service outages.

By effectively balancing the load, OCI enhances the availability and reliability of applications. If one server fails or is undergoing maintenance, the load balancer can redirect traffic to the remaining healthy servers, thus maintaining service continuity for users. This resilience is particularly crucial for applications requiring high uptime and responsiveness, as it helps prevent scenarios where traffic spikes lead to service bottlenecks and potential failures.

In contrast to this, the other options do not accurately represent the fundamental purpose and benefits of load balancing. Reducing the number of users accessing the service contradicts the goal of maximizing service availability. Limiting network speed and requiring manual switching are also not features or benefits of a load balancing solution, as effective load balancing automates the distribution of traffic without necessitating manual intervention. Hence, the primary advantage is clearly seen in its ability to maintain service reliability and availability through optimized traffic distribution.