Load Balancer Tester

Overview

Validate load balancer behavior including traffic distribution algorithms, health check mechanisms, failover scenarios, session persistence, and SSL termination. Supports testing for NGINX, HAProxy, AWS ALB/NLB, GCP Load Balancers, and Kubernetes Ingress controllers.

Prerequisites

• Load balancer deployed and accessible in a test environment
• Multiple backend instances running with identifiable responses (hostname headers)
• HTTP client tools (curl, wrk, hey, or k6) for sending test traffic
• Access to load balancer configuration and health check settings
• Ability to stop/start backend instances to simulate failures

Instructions

1. Verify basic load balancer connectivity:
   • Send a request through the load balancer and confirm a backend response.
   • Check the response includes identifying headers (X-Backend-Server, Server) to determine which instance served the request.
   • Verify SSL/TLS termination works correctly (valid certificate, proper redirect from HTTP to HTTPS).