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Software Load Balancer Enterprise

Description

For the enterprise sector, we have selected the Nginx+ web server to meet the most demanding load management requirements of your project. As a central component, Nginx+ offers numerous ways to make your setup faster, more available, and more secure. Key factors in our decision to use it include its highly resource-efficient implementation—capable of handling thousands of connections within a single process, minimizing CPU and RAM overhead—and its high stability, even under heavy load. Nginx+ also includes all the features that distinguish the standard version of Nginx. When combined with Apache2-based web applications, Nginx can be configured to serve static content (such as images, scripts, and CSS files) while forwarding requests for dynamically generated content to an application server, an Apache web server, or Tomcat, for example. This setup is known as a reverse proxy. SSL connections are terminated at the software load balancer.

Goals of this service

  • Enable horizontal scaling of your setup by adding application servers

What you can expect from our service

  • Scalability
  • Content compression
  • Active health checking
  • Configuration changes without rebooting
  • Increased setup stability through request and connection limits
  • Enhanced security via an optional Web Application Firewall (ModSecurity)

Optional service features

  • Rate limiting
  • Sticky sessions
  • Image resizing
  • SSL connections
  • Performance tuning (caching, compression)
  • Fault tolerance after hardware failure
  • HA Active-Active

Service requests

  • Service restart
  • Cache clearing
  • Compression configuration
  • Simple configuration changes
  • Performance scaling

Standard Configurations

We offer two distinct standard solutions for software load balancing, which differ in recovery time after a service outage. If these options do not meet your requirements, or if you would like assistance with setup, please contact our consulting team to develop a solution tailored to your specific needs. Alternatively, we offer a hardware load balancer that provides advanced intelligent load distribution capabilities and can serve as the foundation for your DDoS protection strategy.

Single-Server Setup

This option is particularly suitable for development and testing environments, as it offers excellent cost-efficiency. It involves the installation and operation of a single software load balancer.

Anycast Setup

The load balancer acts as the central entry point for all internet requests and often represents a potential single point of failure. While the Nginx solution used by us is highly stable, our Anycast option provides additional protection against service outages caused by hardware failure. In this setup, two load balancers are distributed across separate hardware nodes within a data center. Both load balancers operate in parallel, which also boosts your setup's potential performance. The hardware nodes are continuously monitored for availability; if one node fails, requests are automatically routed to the load balancer on the remaining functional node, ensuring no customer requests are lost.

Beyond handling unplanned outages, the Anycast setup offers another advantage: during hardware or software maintenance, our processes ensure that at least one of the two load balancers continues to process customer requests. We offer an optional Premium SLA for this configuration. HA Active-Active

Upon request

Our Trending tool gives you access to Nginx-specific historical data, such as:

  • Hits per second
  • Active connections
  • Idle and active PHP-FPM processes
  • PHP-FPM connections

...allowing you to monitor and optimize load balancer usage.

External Access

External access is not available.

Optional Features/Configurations

Please contact our consulting team for further information.

Managed Cloud Instance Sizes

We would be happy to provide a quote for larger or smaller Managed Cloud instances tailored to your performance requirements upon request.

FAQ

Does the software load balancer support HTTP/2 (formerly SPDY)?

Yes, starting with Ubuntu 16.04.

Can I use Let's Encrypt certificates?

Yes. Certificate renewal is handled automatically.

Important Notes

  • We offer Nginx as a managed service. You can find further information and details about our managed services on our website.
  • Operation requires an Nginx+ license, which must be provided by the customer and incurs additional costs.
  • Nginx Plus offers an extended feature set compared to the community edition. You can find a comparison with standard Nginx.
  • We do not offer all Nginx+ features as part of the managed service.