This tutorial guides you through the process of creating a load balancer with webservers functioning as backend servers.
If you have already configured a network, a router, and webservers, you have the option to skip ahead to the Creating the loadbalancer section.
However, for a comprehensive understanding, we recommend reading through the entire tutorial.
Before diving into the creation of a load balancer, it’s essential to configure an internal OpenStack network.
This involves creating an internal network, an internal subnet, and an OpenStack router. If your network is
already set up, you can skip this initial configuration and proceed directly to the Creating the webservers section.
First we need to create an internal network. For this tutorial we will name it webserver-network.
However, feel free to assign a name of your choice to the network.
We will connect the network to a router and connect the router to the floating IP network.
In the article below you can find a step by step guide on how to create an internal network: please
replace the name of the network with webserver-network and the name of the subnet with webserver-subnet.
For this tutorial, we’ll set up three webservers. Feel free to adjust the number of webservers according
to your needs, or you can skip this section entirely if you already have webservers operational.
For this tutorial assumes three instances are created. you can use the following tutorial combined with the specs below:
On the Details tab:
On the Source tab:
On the Flavor tab:
On the Networks tab:
On the Security Groups tab:
On the Configuration tab:
Customization Script field to update packages and install Apache2 on the webservers:#cloud-config
package_upgrade: true
packages:
- apache2
- php
- libapache2-mod-php
write_files:
- path: /var/www/html/index.php
content: |
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Loadbalancer Tutorial</title>
<link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.1.3/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
<div class="container mt-5">
<div class="card">
<div class="card-header">
Hostname Information
</div>
<div class="card-body">
<h5 class="card-title">Server Hostname</h5>
<p class="card-text"><?php echo gethostname(); ?></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
runcmd:
- systemctl restart apache2
Now we can create the loadbalancer. We will create a loadbalancer with a listener, a pool and a healthmonitor.
Step 1: Navigate to the Network tab and select Load Balancers.
Step 2: Initiate the process by clicking on the Create Load Balancer button.
Step 3: Enter details in the following fields:
Step 4: Proceed to the Listener tab by clicking on Next.
Step 5: Complete the following fields:
Step 6: Proceed to the Pool Details tab by clicking on Next.
Step 7: Enter information in the following fields:
Step 8: Proceed to the Pool Members tab by clicking on Next.
Step 9: Identify the instances you wish to include and click on Add for each.
Step 10: Enter the designated port for the host (80) and set the weight (1). Repeat this step for all webserver hosts you’re adding.
Step 11: Navigate to the Health Monitor tab by clicking on Next.
Step 12: Complete the following fields:
Step 13: Initiate the creation of your load balancer by clicking on Create Load Balancer.
Step 14: Locate the load balancer you’ve just set up and click the small arrow beside it. From the dropdown menu, select Associate Floating IP.
Step 15: Select an available floating IP or choose the net-float pool, then confirm your choice by clicking on Associate.
Step 16: Await the update of the load balancer’s Operating Status to ONLINE. Once this status is achieved, navigate to http://<floating-ip> in your web browser to witness your load balancer functioning.
If you want to customize your Loadbalancer even further we highly recommend you to read the OpenStack Octavia Loadbalancer documentation