Create a Load Balancer

Create a Load Balancer to give your web app one address and spread its traffic across your backends. A new Load Balancer gets a hostname ending in .e2enetworks.net and a public IP address, and shows Running when it is ready.

Before you begin

• Permission to create Load Balancers in the project. See TIR Access Control.
• (Optional) A security group to attach. To make one, see Create a security group.

The form creates one type of Load Balancer: a web Load Balancer, Web Traffic (HTTP/HTTPS), that is reachable from the public internet.

Open the form

In the side menu, under Compute, select Load Balancer, then Create Load Balancer.

Fill in the form

1. In Name, keep the suggested lb- name or enter your own. A name takes lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens, starts with a letter, and has at most 50 characters. It must be unique in the project.
2. In Capacity, choose a plan for the project’s region. The plan sets the request rate limit and the number of simultaneous connections, and has a price per hour. For prices, see E2E Networks pricing.
3. High availability is on by default. Leave it on or turn it off; you can choose either with any plan. The Overview tab later says which one you have, under Redundancy.
4. In Frontend Protocol, tick HTTP (port 80), HTTPS (port 443), or both. HTTPS alone is the default, and at least one must stay ticked.
   • With HTTPS ticked, the Load Balancer is secured on its e2enetworks.net address, with the certificate included. You can add your own domain later, from the Domains tab; see Use a custom domain and certificate.
   • With both ticked, you can turn on Redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
5. (Optional) In Backends, select Add backend group to set up a group of backends now, and Add another backend group for more, or Remove group to take one out. The first group is named default-pool and later ones backend-group-2, backend-group-3, and so on; you can rename them. Each group needs at least one backend. An empty group stops the creation, so add a backend to it or remove it. The fields of a group are in Create a backend group. You can also skip this section and add groups later from the Load Balancer’s page.
6. (Optional) Open Advanced Settings.
   • Security Group takes one security group. To make one first, select Click here.
   • Timeouts has four fields in seconds, each starting at 60. Connection is the longest time to open a connection to a backend before the request fails. Client is the longest idle time the Load Balancer waits for data from the client before it closes the connection. Server is the longest idle time it waits for data from a backend before it drops the request. HTTP Keep-alive is the longest time an idle persistent HTTP/1.1 connection to a backend stays open.
7. Select Create Load Balancer.

Before it creates anything, TIR checks that a capacity is chosen, that each backend group has a valid port, and that each backend group has at least one backend. It then creates the Load Balancer and adds the backend groups one by one.

Watch it start

The new Load Balancer’s page opens and follows the setup: TIR creates the Load Balancer, configures its routing rules if it has any, assigns a public IP, and creates its DNS record. The status is one of these:

• Initializing means the Load Balancer is being created.
• Running means creation has finished. The Domain and the Public IP are on the Overview tab.
• Failed means creation failed, and the page gives the reason.

TIR assigns the public IP while the Load Balancer starts. If the IP takes longer than 240 seconds, creation fails. A Load Balancer that failed stays in the list as Failed. Delete it from its page, then create a new one.

If a backend group fails to be added after the Load Balancer is created, the Load Balancer still exists, and you finish its backends on its details page. If the create itself fails to start, nothing is created, and TIR gives the error.

A Load Balancer answers every request with a 503 error until it has a rule. Once the status is Running, add a backend group if you still need one, then add a rule to send traffic to it. For help with a message, see Troubleshooting TIR Load Balancer.