Introducing Load Balancers

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Managed Load Balancer Service on the Huddle01 Cloud Platform!

Keeping your applications fast, available, and scalable is non-negotiable, Our Managed Load Balancer is engineered to distribute network traffic efficiently across your backend servers, ensuring a seamless user experience and protecting your services against downtime.

What is Load Balancing?

At its core, a Load Balancer acts as the traffic cop for your application. Instead of sending all user requests to a single server, it intelligently directs requests to multiple backend servers or Virtual Machines (VMs). This process offers three major benefits:

1. High Availability: If one server fails, the Load Balancer automatically routes traffic to the remaining healthy servers, preventing service interruption.

2. Scalability: Easily handle sudden spikes in traffic by adding more backend servers, allowing your application to scale horizontally.

3. Performance: By distributing the load, no single server becomes overwhelmed, leading to faster response times for your users.

Key Features You'll Love!

Our new Load Balancer service is designed to be powerful yet intuitive. Here's a look at the features you can start using today:

1. Enhanced Security with Cloudflare Protection

We understand that security is paramount. When you configure your policies using the HTTPS protocol, your endpoints are automatically protected by Cloudflare. This integration provides:

• DDoS Mitigation: Protection against volumetric attacks.

• Web Application Firewall (WAF): Security against common web vulnerabilities.

• Performance Benefits: Utilizing Cloudflare's global network for faster DNS resolution and content delivery.

2. Advanced Policy Management and Content-Based Routing

Easily control how traffic is routed using powerful Policies and Rules. The system allows you to inspect incoming traffic and decide which backend server pool should handle the request.

You have granular control with the following rule types available when creating a new rule:

• Host Name: Direct traffic based on the domain requested (e.g., routing api.example.com to an API pool).

• Path: Route traffic based on the URL path (e.g., sending all /images requests to a media server pool).

• File Type: Distribute requests based on the file extension.

• Header: Use any custom HTTP header to define a rule.

• Cookie: Base routing decisions on the presence or value of a specific cookie.

3. Health Monitoring and Member Configuration

Reliability is key. Our integrated Health Monitor configuration ensures that only ONLINE and healthy servers receive traffic. Unhealthy members are automatically removed from rotation.

How Health Checks Work

The health check process constantly verifies the status of your backend servers according to the parameters you define:

1. Request: The Load Balancer sends a request (e.g., an HTTP GET) using the configured URL Path (e.g., /) to the backend server.

2. Timing: The check is performed every Check Interval (Delay) (e.g., 5s), with a maximum time limit of Timeout (s) (e.g., 3s) for a response.

3. Validation: If the server responds with one of the Expected Codes (e.g., 200), the check is successful.

4. Status Change: If a server fails a number of checks equal to the Max Retries (e.g., 3 attempts), it is marked as DOWN/ERROR and traffic is stopped immediately. When it successfully responds to health checks again, it is automatically brought back ONLINE.

Monitoring IP and Port

When you add a Pool Member, you specify two key parameters to define the health check location:

• Monitor IP: This is the specific IP address of the backend server (VM) where the health check request will be sent (e.g., 10.2.199.188).

• Monitor Port: This is the specific port on that IP address where the health check request will be sent (e.g., 3000).

This flexibility allows you to set the health check target to a dedicated diagnostic port, ensuring the check accurately reflects the application's internal state, separate from the main traffic port.

4. Quick and Flexible Deployment

Setting up a Load Balancer is straightforward:

1. Choose your Location: Select a deployment region, such as Netherlands (EU2) or Singapore (SG1).

2. Select your Flavor: Choose the vCPU and RAM configuration that meets your performance and budget needs (e.g., 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM).

3. Configure Pools: Easily Add Members to your backend server pools using their Endpoint (IP and Port).

4. Deploy: Once your configuration is validated, deploy the Load Balancer to start distributing traffic!

Getting Started

Ready to experience high availability, scale your application effortlessly, and benefit from Cloudflare protection?

1. Log in to your Huddle01 Cloud Dashboard.

2. Navigate to the Load Balancers section.

3. Click Create Load Balancer and start defining your policies today!

We believe this new service will be a game-changer for deploying resilient and high-performance applications on Huddle01 Cloud.

Happy Balancing!