gRPC: Client side vs Server side load balancing, which one to choose?

1 week ago 7

Hello everyone,
My setup: Two FastAPI apps calling gRPC ML services (layout analysis + table detection). Need to scale both the services.

Question: For GPU-based ML inference over gRPC, does NGINX load balancing significantly hurt performance vs client-side load balancing?

Main concerns:

  • Losing HTTP/2 multiplexing benefits
  • Extra latency (though probably negligible vs 2-5s processing time)
  • Need priority handling for time-critical clients

Current thinking: NGINX seems simpler operationally, but want to make sure I'm not shooting myself in the foot performance-wise.

Experience with gRPC + NGINX? Client-side LB worth the complexity for this use case?

submitted by /u/Constant_Fun_5643 to r/Python
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