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 web sites, applications, databases and other services.

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.

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. Currently we provide the following Availability Zones:

   • PAR1: Paris 1, France.
   • PAR2: Paris 2, France (innovative and sustainable availability zone).
   • AMS1: Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
   • AMS2: Amsterdam 2, The Netherlands.
   • WAW1: Warsaw 1, Poland.
   • WAW2: Warsaw 2, Poland.

5. Select a Load Balancer type, according to your bandwidth needs.

   

6. Select an IP address for your Load Balancer. You can either allocate a new IP, or select one of your existing IPs.

7. Configure your Load Balancer’s frontend by entering a name and a port. 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. You can also add additional frontends after creation.

   

8. Configure your Load Balancer’s backend by entering a name, and the protocol and port it should use to connect to the backend servers. You should also a select a proxy protocol option, health check method and add the server IPs (one or many) of the backend server(s) it should direct traffic to. You can add additional backends after creating your Load Balancer, if required.

   

   Depending on the options you choose, you may be prompted for additional configurations such as the Verify certificate setting if you select the HTTPS protocol. For more information on choosing configuration settings for your Load Balancer’s backend, see our dedicated reference documentation.

9. Configure advanced settings if required:

   • S3 failover: activate the feature and enter a Scaleway Object Storage Bucket Website URL (e.g. https://my-bucket.s3-website.nl-ams.scw.cloud). If none of your backend servers are available, users will be redirected to this page.
     Note:

     The S3 failover feature is only available for Load Balancers using the HTTP protocol on their backend. Find out more about setting up a static website with Object Storage in our dedicated documentation.

   • Sticky session: activate the feature if you want a particular user session to stick to the same backend server. This is useful if your users need their requests to be served by a single server in order to maintain a consistent session. If relevant, you will be prompted to enter the name for a cookie that will bind users’ sessions to specific backend servers.

10. Click Create Load Balancer.

    Note:

    • By default, each Load Balancer is created using round-robin balancing rules.
    • You can add additional frontends and backends to your Load Balancer after its creation.

How to add frontends

You can add more frontends to your Load Balancer after its creation. This allows you to configure different frontends listening on different ports, and to connect different frontends to different backends as required.

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 add frontends to. The Load Balancer information page displays.
3. Click the Frontends tab.
4. Click «Plus Icon» to launch the frontend creation wizard.
   
5. Enter a name and port for your new frontend. Note that each frontend must listen on a different port.
6. Select an SSL certificate(s) for your frontend to use, if required. Note that you must already have created or imported an SSL certificate for your Load Balancer in order to select one here.
7. Choose between using an existing backend or creating a new backend. Your frontend will direct traffic to the backend you choose here.
   • If using an existing backend, click Use an existing backend and select the backend of your choice from the dropdown list.
   • If creating a new backend, click Create a new backend and enter a name, port, protocol, proxy protocol, health check type, server IP(s) and advanced settings as required. See our dedicated documentation for help configuring your backend.
8. Under Advanced Settings, optionally use the «Toogle Icon» to enable HTTP/3. The availability of this setting depends on your Load Balancer’s configuration
9. Click Create Frontend.

How to add backends

You can add more backends to your Load Balancer after its creation. Each backend can be connected to a different frontend, allowing you to route traffic through your Load Balancer according to your needs.

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 add backends to. The Load Balancer information page displays.
3. Click the Backends tab.
4. Click the green + button.
   
5. Enter a name, protocol, port, protocol, health check type, server IP(s) and advanced settings as required for your new backend. See our dedicated page for help configuring your backend, including details of how to set up SSL bridging, offloading or passthrough.
6. Click Create Backend.

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 Balancer and all your data will be lost. This action is irreversible.

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