Configuring Load Balancers

Overview

Configure load balancers across AWS (ALB, NLB), GCP (HTTP(S) LB, TCP/UDP LB), Nginx, and HAProxy. Generate production-ready configurations with health checks, SSL/TLS termination, path-based and host-based routing, sticky sessions, rate limiting, and traffic distribution rules for high-availability deployments.

Prerequisites

• Backend servers identified with IPs, DNS names, and ports
• Load balancer type determined: L4 (NLB, HAProxy TCP) or L7 (ALB, Nginx, HAProxy HTTP)
• SSL/TLS certificates available (ACM, Let's Encrypt, or self-signed) if using HTTPS
• Health check endpoints defined on backend services (e.g., /health returning 200)
• Cloud provider CLI installed for managed load balancers (aws, gcloud)

Instructions

1. Select load balancer type based on requirements: ALB for HTTP/HTTPS with path routing, NLB for TCP/UDP with static IPs, Nginx for on-prem reverse proxy, HAProxy for high-performance TCP/HTTP
2. Define the backend pool: list all backend server addresses, ports, and weights for weighted distribution
3. Configure health checks with appropriate interval (10-30s), timeout (5s), healthy threshold (3), and unhealthy threshold (2)
4. Set up SSL/TLS termination: configure certificates, redirect HTTP to HTTPS, set minimum TLS version to 1.2