Azure Load Balancer

An Azure load balancer distributes incoming traffic across the servers in a blueprint’s server tier

  2 minute read  

Cloud Management Platform (CMP) creates and deletes the load balancer, and adds or removes servers from its backend pool as the tier scales up and down. Any other configuration is done in the Azure portal.

Prerequisites

  • An Azure resource handler with at least one region and one image imported.
  • An Azure environment with at least one OS build.

Add a load balancer to a blueprint

A load balancer is a build item on a blueprint, alongside the server tier it balances. These steps build the simplest case, one server tier plus one load balancer. To balance more than one tier, add a server tier build item for each.

  1. Create a blueprint, or open an existing one.
  2. On the Build tab, add a Server Tier item and configure its environment with no public IP address. CMP always assigns the load balancer a public IP address, so traffic reaches the servers through it.
  3. Add a Load Balancer item and select Azure ALB.
  4. Complete the load balancer fields:
    • Source port and Destination port: the port traffic arrives on, and the port it is forwarded to on each server.
    • Server Tiers: the tiers this load balancer applies to. Leave it empty to balance every server built up to this point in the blueprint.
    • Rate: a fixed cost for running the load balancer. The label shows the currency and time unit from your global rate settings.
  5. Select Save.
  6. On the Overview tab, select Order.

CMP deploys the load balancer and its servers together, placing the load balancer in the same Azure resource group as its first server. Changes after that, such as network security groups, are made in the Azure portal.

  • Provisioning: the Azure parameters that shape the servers behind the load balancer.
  • Azure: create the resource handler and import its regions.