statsd, workers, udp, and fail-safe load balancing

Hello,

I am new to graphite and needing to use statsd with it. I am setting up a master/slave config for multiple graphite servers with load balancing between statsd and carbon as a failsafe measure for if, I mean when my master crashes. However, my question is what should I do for failover protection on the statsd end.

What is the best/recommended method for this. How should my workers deal with statsd crashing? I've put a basic example down below to illustrate my question (poorly drawn, but the point should be there).

                                                                         Graphite
                                                                               |
                                                                               |
                                              Carbon master ---- -----Carbon slave
                                                                               |(TCP)
                                                         ___________|____________ load balancer
                                                         ___________|_____________
                                                       / \
                                                       | statds statds statsd |
                                                       | |
                                                        \________________________/
                                                                | | (UDP) |
                                                         ___ |_______|________|____(should I just put another load balancer here?)
                                                                | | |
                                                                | | |
                                                          worker worker worker

This might be a newbie question, but I was having trouble finding documentation for this issue. Also, I know the nature of UDP makes this issue tough to deal, so any pointers/suggestions/help is greatly appreciated.

-Fillmore