I'm completely new to the concept of load balancing so i hope this question isn't a "stupid question" because i've been searching around and im having a hard time understanding this. So to my understanding, in order to load balance, i need a separate machine with an ip address i can direct all traffic to. I initially thought i needed to rent 3 dedicated servers, one for load balancing and the other two as backend servers. Would a dedicated server be too much for a load balancer or do hosting companies have special types of computers for that process?

Then i read somewhere else that i can install a load balance software in both of the two servers and configure it in a way that doesn't require me to rent another machine/dedicated server for load balancing.

So im a bit confuse on how to actually implement a load balancer and whether or not i need a dedicated server for the sole purpose of acting as a load balancing machine. Also, i was recommended to use HAproxy so i'll be heading that direction for load balancing.