Gateway Load Balancer (Beta)

Overview

The Gateway Load Balancer (LB) is a powerful feature designed to simplify network management and enhance the reliability of your services. Currently, this Load Balancer feature helps manage traffic across multiple services, ensuring seamless operation, better scalability, and optimized resource usage.

In traditional nextgen-gateway setups, multiple IP addresses were required for each service, and services often relied on fixed numbers of instances. With the new OpsRamp Load Balancer feature on nextgen-gateway, this complexity is eliminated by consolidating traffic management under a single IP per Gateway instance. This setup ensures that the network is simpler to manage, while simultaneously improving the overall performance and scalability of services.

Note

This is a Beta feature and it can be enabled using feature flag. Please contact OpsRamp Support to enable the same.
Single IP will be shared by all the nextgen gateway external traffic listening services.
Auto Scaling and Load Balancing is applicable to Squid Proxy & NPM Collector (only from 2.0.0) running on Gateway 19.1.0 or newer. Older versions of NPM Collector will continue using node port mode.
System can allow to use default ports with NPM 2.0 running on version 19.1.0 of the single load balancer.
If there are any unexpected issues arise, Please report to OpsRamp Support.

Key Benefits

Following are key feature of the Gateway Load Balancer feature:

Simplified Network Management: Reduces IP dependencies, consolidating them to a single IP per Gateway.
Improved Reliability: Automatic load balancing enhances the reliability of Squid Proxy and NPM.
Enhanced Scalability: Services dynamically scale based on demand automatically, providing flexibility in resource allocation.
Optimized Resource Usage: Configurations automatically adjust to match real-time resource needs.
Preserved Source Information: Client source IPs are retained across all connections.

Comparison of Setup: With Load Balancer vs. Without Load Balancer

Aspect	Before Load Balancer	After Load Balancer Enabled
IP Addressing	Separate IP addresses required for Gateway, NPM, and Squid services.	Single IP address serves Gateway, Squid Proxy, and third-party services. All services are routed through a central load balancer with one external IP.
Service Scaling	Fixed number of instances for each service.	Applications automatically scale based on demand for Squid and NPM applications.
Load Balancing	No load balancing within the service.	Integrated load balancing for Squid Proxy and NPM services.
Traffic Routing	Independent traffic routing for each service.	Requests are efficiently routed through a central controller.

NPM Compatibility

Version	Mode of Operation	Details
Before Version 19.1.0	Nodeport Mode	NPM Collector operates in nodeport mode, requiring specific port range (30000-32767).
Version 19.1.0 (without LB Enabled)	Nodeport Mode	NPM Collector still operates in nodeport mode, with no load balancing enabled.
Version 19.1.0 (with LB Enabled)	Load Balancer Mode	Utilises the Single LB Controller for enhanced performance and load balancing for NPM 2.0.0 alone.