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 to be used to manage traffic distribution effectively.

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

A load balancer determines which server to send a request to based on the desired algorithm (e.g., Round Robin, Least Connections, Random). The choice among the load balancing algorithms depends on the requirements of the specific use case. Additionally, Octavia supports the creation of health monitors that periodically check pool members and ensure traffic is only routed to healthy ones.

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.