Load Balancing Overview

Load balancing is an important part of many applications. Let's take a look at how you can approach this on Equinix Metal.

At Equinix Metal:

• We work with ecosystem providers of load balancers rather than offering a managed service.
• We have a Kubernetes integration (Cloud Controller Manager) that supports many service-type/Layer 4 load balancers.
• We do not offer any hardware load balancers as standard, please contact support to discuss any specialist requirements you may have.

How to get started

Our supported Kubernetes load balancers

Finding the right solution for Kubernetes load balancing can be challenging. While load balancing can seem like a simple concept, Kubernetes can make it difficult to set up effectively. Now throw in the added complexities of a do-it-yourself bare-metal environment and you might start to feel it's going to be tricky!

A Kubernetes type: LoadBalancer service in the cluster is used to expose backend workloads externally to the cluster itself. Many cloud providers offer service type: LoadBalancer plugins that only work if you deploy the cluster on specific IaaS platforms.

Running Kubernetes on bare metal give you greater levels of control and customization but Kubernetes does not provide an out-of-the-box solution for this kind of setup. Therefore, we recommend you use our CCM with one of the following Kubernetes load balancers that are tried and tested on Equinix Metal.

Take the following steps:

1. Install our Cloud Controller Manager (CCM). It is the quickest, simplest and easiest way to get started with load balancing. CCM works with many Kubernetes load balancers.
2. Install and configure your load balancer. Visit the documentation of the load balancer you wish to use and follow the installation and configuration instructions there.
3. Check out our Technical Guides. For those who want a more detailed look at installation on Equinix Metal, we offer a guide on Installing Kube-Vip.

Other load balancers

• Deployed Software Load Balancers. Some of our customers use load balancers including HAProxy and Nginx. We have a guide that demonstrates use of HAProxy as a load balancer on Equinix Metal.
• It's possible to set up load balancing using Bird.
• If you would like to use other options e.g. an application/Layer 7 load balancer, please contact support.

Requesting new features, guides and integrations

For any of Equinix Metal's product or ecosystem offerings, we welcome your suggestions and votes on Canny.

More resources

We like this Citrix guide to learning load balancing fundamentals.