Service degradation refers to the deterioration in the quality of a service, often resulting in reduced customer satisfaction and potential loss of business. It can arise from factors such as overload, resource contention, or misconfigurations, and requires timely identification and resolution to maintain service reliability.
Load balancing is a method used to distribute network or application traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single server becomes overwhelmed, thereby improving responsiveness and availability. It is critical for optimizing resource use, maximizing throughput, and minimizing response time in distributed computing environments.