Load Balancer

OpenStack Octavia service enables the deployment of load balancing solutions in OpenStack projects.

A load balancer functions as a traffic intermediary, directing network or application traffic to multiple server endpoints. It helps manage capacity during high traffic periods and enhances the reliability of applications. The main components of a load balancer are the following:

• Listener: The listener is a component that defines how incoming traffic is received. It listens for connection requests on a specific port and protocol (e.g., HTTP, HTTPS), and directs this traffic to the appropriate backend pool

• Pool: The pool is a collection of backend servers (also known as members) that receive and process the incoming traffic distributed by the load balancer. The pool determines the load balancing algorithm and health check policies to manage traffic distribution effectively

• Members: Members are the individual servers within a pool that handle the actual processing of the traffic. Each member represents a single endpoint (server) that performs the required tasks or services requested by the client.

A load balancer determines which server to send a request to based on a desired algorithms (e.g., Round Robin, Least Connections, Random). The choice among the load balancing algorithms depends on the requirements of the specific use case.

Note

The Octavia service is available but it is not enabled by default to all HPC Cloud projects. If you want to use it please ask access sending an email to superc@cineca.it.