"When architecting an IT environment, it is critical to ensure that the resources are available when the users need them. This is accomplished by assigning specific processes to specific types of hardware. Session affinity, sticky sessions, and load balancing are techniques used to accomplish this. Both sticky sessions and session affinity refer to the same process being served by the same hardware resource. Load balancing involves keeping the Amazon user information and resources available to the designated machine or, in some cases, all the machines. Making user information available to all devices helps balance the load when the designated resource is already in use by another process. The goal of all of these is to ensure that each user at Amazon can do their work when they need to and doesn't have to wait for another user or process to be completed."