Load Balancers - Quickstart

Load Balancers are highly available and fully-managed Instances which allow you to distribute your workload across your various servers. They ensure the scaling of all your applications while securing their continuous availability, even in the event of heavy traffic. Load Balancers are commonly used to improve the performance and reliability of websites, applications, databases and other services.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

• A Scaleway account logged into the console
• Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization

How to create a Load Balancer

1. Click Load Balancers in the Network section of the Scaleway console side menu. If you have not already created a Load Balancer, the product creation page is displayed. Otherwise, your list of existing Load Balancers displays.

2. Click + Create Load Balancer. The creation wizard displays.

3. Enter a name for your Load Balancer. Optionally, you can also add a description and assign tags to help organize your Load Balancers.

4. Choose the Availability Zone in which your Load Balancer will be deployed geographically.

5. Select a Load Balancer type, according to your needs in terms of bandwidth and whether you want to be able to attach backend servers from other cloud providers than Scaleway (Multi-cloud provider).

6. Select the accessibility of your Load Balancer. Choose either:

   • Private: A private Load Balancer will have no public IP address, and is only accessible from the Private Network(s) it is attached to. You can attach your Load Balancer to a Private Network after creation of the Load Balancer. Read more about private Load Balancers.
   • Public: A public Load Balancer is accessible from the internet via its public IP address. You must choose from the following IP options:
     • IPv4: A public IPv4 address is obligatory. You can either allocate a new IPv4 address, or select one of your existing flexible IPv4 addresses.
     • IPv6: You can optionally add a public IPv6 address in addition to the IPv4 address. You can either allocate a new IPv6 address, or select one of your existing flexible IPv6 addresses.

   Accessibility cannot be modified after creation of the Load Balancer.

7. Click Create and add front and backend to create your Load Balancer, and configure a frontend and backend for it.

How to configure your frontend

1. Enter a name for your frontend.

2. Enter a port number. The frontend will listen on this port, and forward the requests it receives from clients to the backend(s). Note that you cannot add an SSL certificate at this stage, but you can add one after the creation of the Load Balancer. Similarly, you will be able to enable HTTP/3 after adding a certificate.

   Tip

   For more help with configuring your frontend, see our dedicated reference documentation.

Continue to the next section for creating a backend. You will finalize creation of your frontend and backend at the same time, at the end of this section.

How to configure your backend

Configuring basic settings

1. Enter a name for your backend.

2. Enter a protocol and port for your backend. The Load Balancer initiates connections to its backend servers using the protocol and port you define here. Available protocols are HTTP or TCP.

   Tip

   For HTTPS, choose HTTP and activate TLS encryption.

3. Choose whether to activate TLS encryption (default setting is deactivated), to encrypt connections between the Load Balancer and its backend servers.

4. Choose whether to activate proxy protocol (default setting is deactivated), to transfer connection information from the client through the Load Balancer and on to the destination backend server. If you choose to activate proxy protocol, you are prompted to select the version to use.

   Tip

   For more help understanding and choosing basic configuration settings for your backend, see our dedicated reference documentation.

Continue to the next section for configuring traffic management.

Configuring traffic management

Traffic management configuration lets you define how your Load Balancer's backend forwards traffic to its final destination backend servers.

1. Select a balancing method. This determines how the backend distributes requests between its backend servers. The following methods are available:

   • Round-robin (default): Requests are sent to each backend server in turn.
   • Least connections: Requests are forwarded to the backend server with the fewest current connections.
   • First available: Requests are forwarded to the first backend server with available connection slots.

2. Add the Server IP addresses of the servers the Load Balancer will forward requests/connections to. These will be your backend servers.

   Note

   If you want your Load Balancer to communicate with its backend servers over an attached Private Network, ensure that you enter the servers' private IP addresses on that network. This is necessary in the case of a private Load Balancer, but may also be desired for public Load Balancers attached to Private Networks where backend servers are on the same Private Network.

3. Choose whether to activate sticky sessions (default setting is deactivated). Sticky sessions enable the Load Balancer to bind a given user's sessions to a specific backend server. If you choose to activate sticky sessions, you are prompted to select either IP-based (clients' IPs are used to bind sessions) or cookie-based (an HTTP cookie is used to bind sessions, and you must choose a name for the cookie).

   Tip

   For more help choosing traffic management settings for your backend, see our dedicated reference documentation.

Continue to the next section for configuring advanced settings.

Configuring advanced settings

Advanced settings are already configured for you at recommended default values. However, if you wish to modify these values you can do so by clicking the Advanced settings button, to access parameters for timeout values, backend protection, connection retries and a customized error page.

Continue to the next section for configuring health checks.

Configuring health checks

Health checks are regular, automized attempts by the Load Balancer to communicate with backend servers. This ensures that servers are listening and healthy.

1. Select a health check type. Various protocols are available, including HTTP, TCP, MYSQL, and more. Depending on the health check type you choose, you may be prompted to enter additional information.

2. Choose whether to use proxy protocol during health checks. Proxy protocol enables the original client IP address to be passed to the backend server in a standardized way during health checks. The proxy protocol setting for health checks is inherited from the backend configuration but you can choose to override it. For more information, click the link in the green tip box below.

3. Choose whether to edit more settings for health checks by clicking the Advanced settings button. Otherwise, these settings will be left at the recommended default values.

   Tip

   For more help setting up health checks for your backend, including advanced settings such as defining intervals between health checks, timeout values and the unhealthy threshold, see our dedicated reference documentation.

Confirming creation of your frontend and backend

When you have finished configuring your frontend and backend, click Create frontend and backend at the bottom of the page to finish.

How to finish configuring your Load Balancer

Depending on your use case, you may need to carry out further configuration on your Load Balancer. Refer to the following documentation:

• Add an SSL/TLS certificate, necessary for SSL offloading or bridging
• Attach a Load Balancer to a Private Network
• Set up Load Balancer ACLs or routes
• Create an Edge Services pipeline for your Load Balancer

How to delete a Load Balancer

1. Click Load Balancers in the Network section of the Scaleway console side menu. The Load Balancer dashboard displays.
2. Click the Load Balancer you want to delete.
3. Scroll down and click Delete Load Balancer.
   Important

   This will permanently delete your Load Balance, and all of its configuration data will be lost. This action is irreversible.

4. Type DELETE in the pop-up box.
5. Tick the checkbox if you want to delete the associated flexible IP address.
6. Click Delete Load Balancer.