A load balancing system is provided including: one or more virtual machines implemented in a cloud-based network and including a processor; and a load balancing application implemented in the virtual machines and executed by the processor. The load balancing application is configured such that the processor: receives one or more health messages indicating states of health of network appliances implemented in an appliance layer of the cloud-based network; receives a forwarding packet from a network device for an application server; based on the health messages, determines whether to perform a failover process or select a network appliance; performs a first iteration of a symmetric conversion to route the forwarding packet to the application server via the selected network appliance; receives a return packet from the application server based on the forwarding packet; and performs a second iteration of the symmetric conversion to route the return packet to the network device.