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Overview
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers offer a cost-effective and reliable cloud-based failover solution. Easy to set up and manage, and powered by Zeus technology, their flexible structure grows with your business and ensures you stay responsive to changing needs.
Unless you already have one, sign up for a Rackspace Cloud account using the below button.
Carry out the "Create Load Balancer" API operation or click “Add Load Balancer" feature in your cloud control panel, depending on your preference. Enter your name, protocol, port, algorithm, and then select the servers you need load balanced.
Repeat as necessary for other Cloud Load Balancers. You can then easily update, customise or remove each Cloud Load Balancer on an ongoing basis, depending on your needs. Manage on-the-go using your iPhone®, iPad® or Android®.
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers start from as little as 1p per hour, and include a range of performance-enhancing features:
- A dedicated (static) IP address
- Support for multiple protocols and algorithms
- Built-in, high availability
- Convenient access via an online control panel and open API
- Compatibility with RackConnect
- No long-term contracts
- SSL Termination available via API
Pricing
View the prices table below, or use our calculator to get the cost of your solution. Calculate now.
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers are priced based on usage and activity, to give you full visibility and ensure that you always know what you’re spending.
Costs are based on usage by-the-hour, number of current connections and bandwidth. We don’t charge anything upfront.
| Load Balancing Prices | Hourly (estimated monthly) |
|---|---|
| Cloud Load Balancer Instance |
1p per Hour
(£7.30 per Month) |
| Cloud Load Balancer instance enabled with SSL* |
3p per Hour
(£21.90 per Month) |
| Each 100 Concurrent Connections** |
1p per Hour
(£7.30 per Month) |
| Bandwidth Pricing | Bandwidth for your cloud load balancer is calculated separately as follows: |
|---|---|
| Bandwidth out | 8p per GB |
| Bandwidth in | No charge |
*Cloud Load Balancers with SSL termination incur a 3p per hour charge and will not incur the additional 1p per hour instance fee. SSL termination will be available via API.
** Concurrent connections are a measure of average utilisation over an hour based on 5 minute polling
Support
All Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers are backed by our unique Fanatical Support which includes:
- Chat/phone/ticket support - available 24/7/365
- Authentication troubleshooting and verification
- Guidance – to understand which API calls to use based on user needs
- Help with set up and management of load balancers via Control Panel
- Verification of cloud load balancing infrastructure availability
- Documentation - where available
- Verification and confirmation of load balancer details
Support for Cloud Load Balancer Customers Using Managed Cloud Servers
Rackspace will provide support for creating, configuring, and deleting your cloud load balancers. Please contact your Managed Cloud Support team for assistance.
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers SLA
Our SLA provides a 99.99% Service Uptime Guarantee.
*Support does not include creating, configuring, or deleting any load balancers on behalf of a user. Cloud Load Balancer users will be solely responsible for creating, configuring, and deleting load balancers via the API or Control Panel.
The technology behind Cloud Load Balancers
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers feature a host of technologies that keep your websites available and responsive.
Zeus load balancing technology manages your application traffic and makes decisions about where to route it. If a node fails, a health check can proactively remove it from rotation to maintain maximum availability. Load balancer configuration can be adjusted on-demand through the control panel or programmatically via API.
High-availability functionality is built-in, at no extra charge. All you need to do is buy one cloud load balancer.
A single cloud load balancer is connected to both the public and internal Rackspace networks, via our high-throughput 10Gb/second network. We have tested to achieve about 9Gb/second of actual throughput. Some limiting factors may influence actual throughput at any given time.
More Features of Cloud Load Balancers
- Static IP Addresses - that can be selectively shared with other load balancers under a single account. IP addresses are persistent and won't change while a load balancer is active.
- Multiple Protocols - Supports load balancing HTTP, HTTPS, LDAP, LDAPS, IMAP, FTP, POP3, POP3S, and SMTP protocols on either a public interface or internal interface.
- Advanced Algorithms - With support for round robin, weighted round robin, least connections, weighted least connections, and random, you can ensure traffic is being properly routed to the back-end nodes in the optimal way for your application.
- Health Check - In the event that a back-end node fails, the load balancer will quickly remove it from rotation. The health check also uses synthetic transaction monitoring to inspect an HTTP response code and body content to determine if the application or site is healthy.
- Advanced Access Control - Easily manage who can and can't access the services that are exposed via the load balancer.
- Session Persistence - If you are load balancing HTTP traffic, the session persistence feature utilises an HTTP cookie to ensure subsequent requests are directed to the same node in your load balancer pool.
- REST-based API - RESTful API lets you customise solutions to automate cloud load balancer management.
- Connection Logging - To simplify log management, the connection logging feature allows for Apache-style access logs (for HTTP-based protocol traffic) or connection and transfer logging (for all other traffic) to your Cloud Files™ account. If you need raw data in one place for performance tuning or web analytics, logs are sorted, aggregated, and delivered to Cloud Files.
- Connection Throttling - As an additional feature, our cloud load balancer has a connection throttling feature that imposes user-defined limits on the number of connections per IP address. This can mitigate malicious or abusive traffic to your application or website.
- SSL Termination - SSL termination allows users to terminate their traffic at the load balancer with centralised certificate management and SSL acceleration for improved throughput and reduced CPU load at the application server for better performance and HTTP/HTTPS session persistence.
The API
- The load balancing service API is implemented using a RESTful web service interface
- Like other products in the Rackspace Cloud suite, the cloud load balancing service shares a common token-based authentication system that allows seamless access between products and services
- The API supports persistent connections
- The load balancing API supports SSL termination, which allows customers to have their SSL traffic terminate at the load balancer
- Content compression: request and response body data may be encoded with gzip compression in order to accelerate interactive performance of API calls and responses
- The load balancing API supports both the JSON and XML data serialisation formats
- The load balancing service is regional, allowing the caller to select a region to provision a load balancer into.
Compare
Support
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers are backed by our legendary Fanatical Support:
- Get chat/phone/ticket support 24/7/365
- Enjoy a 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers customers enjoy support for creating, configuring and deleting load balancers
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
To receive 24/7/365 support for Amazon EC2, you pay greater than $400 per month or 10% of your ELB costs. So, your support costs reflect your ELB usage, rather than being directly related to the amount of support you use.
Dedicated Public IP Address
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
If you want to use A-records to map domain names and web server IPs, you can use a dedicated IP address as a root record for a zone – which gives customers more flexible and natural deployment options.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
When you create an ELB instance, you get a public DNS name. However, it's not very user-friendly and you will probably need to create a CNAME record in DNS to redirect to your URL. If you delete your ELB instance and create it again, you'll need to update your CNAME record since you got a new public DNS name. This isn't simple or intuitive.
Access Control List
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
An ACL-based security model is used for centralised access control. This allows users to define which hosts and networks have access to a load balanced service.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Access control list feature is not available.
Connection Logging
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
To simplify log management, the connection logging feature allows for Apache-style access logs (for HTTP-based protocol traffic) or connection and transfer logging (for all other traffic) to be sent to your Cloud Files account. Logs are sorted, aggregated, and delivered hourly to Cloud Files, which is perfect for users needing to perform tuning, inspection or analysis.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Connection logging feature is not available. Customers must find an alternative method for aggregating log data from multiple backend nodes.
Connection Throttling
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
As an additional security feature, Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers have a connection throttling feature which limits the number of connections per IP address. This helps mitigate malicious or abusive traffic from accessing your application or website.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Connection throttling feature is not available.
Selectable Algorithms
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
Customise the behaviour of your cloud load balancer with selectable algorithms including: random, round robin, weighted round robin, least connections, and weighted least connections.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
ELB uses a non-configurable, round robin load balancing algorithm only.
Advanced HTTP Health Monitoring
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
Use synthetic transaction monitoring to inspect an HTTP response code and body content, to ensure the application or site is healthy. If a node is not responding correctly, it will be removed from rotation until the health check determines that it is functioning properly again.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
While HTTP and TCP-based health monitors are available, ELB does not permit users to define an acceptable status code or body regular expression to match against.
Shared IPs
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
Shared IPs gives you the ability to share IP addresses with other Load Balancers on the same account. It makes management easier, and allows better IP use of Load Balancer configurations.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
ELB does not permit users to share a single IP address across multiple load balancers, but does allow for a single load balancer to support multiple port configurations.
Internal Virtual IPs
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
Internal Virtual IPs allow you to load balance traffic without traversing the public internet. You can load balance internal services, without incurring external bandwidth charges.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
All ELBs are configured as public virtual IPs. An internal virtual IP option is not available.
SSL Termination
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
Supports SSL termination at the load balancer.
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Supports SSL termination at the load balancer.
FAQs
What is a Cloud Load Balancer?
Load balancing distributes workloads across two or more servers, network links and other resources. It does this to maximise throughput, minimise response time and avoid overload. This helps to maintain high availability for mission-critical web-based applications and workloads. Load balancers can be either physical devices or virtualised software appliances. Cloud Load Balancers are virtualised load balancing appliances that are built on a massively scalable shared infrastructure to deliver economies of scale. Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers allow you to quickly load balance multiple Cloud Servers or Dedicated Servers, for optimal resource utilisation.
How much does a Rackspace Cloud Load Balancer cost?
Pricing starts from just 1p per hour. Standard charges for Cloud Files will apply if you have elected to enable log delivery to your Cloud Files account. Further charges will be incurred for additional (unique) virtual IP addresses, on a per-load balancer basis.
How does Rackspace charge for bandwidth (public and private traffic)?
Standard bandwidth rates of 12 per GB per hour apply for outbound transfers over the public network. There is no charge for inbound transfers, or for in/out bandwidth transfers over Rackspace's internal network.
Can I manage my cloud load balancer using the API and Rackspace Cloud Control Panel?
Yes. To use our API, you’ll need a general understanding of the load balancing service and be familiar with:
- RESTful Web Services
- HTTP/1.1 Conventions
- JSON and/or Serialisation Formats
- Atom Syndication Format
Can I use cloud Load Balancers in conjunction with RackConnect™?
Yes. You can use the RackConnect Cisco ASA solution to connect dedicated and cloud servers, while leveraging cloud Load Balancers to load balance between cloud servers. When using RackConnect, you’ll be billed for outgoing bandwidth through your dedicated environment, as well as for outbound traffic for your cloud Load Balancer. If you need to include dedicated and cloud servers in the same resource pools (to load balance between both platforms), use the RackConnect F5® BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™solution.
Do cloud load balancers work with dedicated servers?
Yes. However, we recommend using them via RackConnect, except in low traffic scenarios (due to the potential for significant bandwidth charges). Without RackConnect, you’ll be metered or billed for bandwidth charges for the request outbound from the Cloud Load Balancer, the response outbound from their dedicated firewall and the response outbound again from the cloud Load Balancer returning to the user.
How many concurrent connections can the service handle?
It is estimated that a single load balancer is capable of handling up to 10,000 concurrent connections and 1Gb/sec throughput. Cloud Load Balancers utilizes a multi-tenant environment; this estimate is not a guarantee and may vary depending on the number of concurrent connections other customer load balancers are processing.
How will I manage and distribute IPs?
Each load balancer comes with one public IPv4 address. Additional IPv4 addresses can be purchased for £2 each per month with proper justification. Scenarios where additional IPv4 addresses will be approved include High Availability configurations and SSL Certificates (no self-signed certificates). Please submit a ticket to make a request.
Will I be able to perform SSL termination?
Yes. SSL allows users to have their traffic terminate at the load balancer with easier centralised certificate management, SSL acceleration for improved throughput, reduced CPU load at the application server for better performance and HTTP/HTTPS session persistence.
When should I not use SSL Termination on Cloud Load Balancers?
When you have Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in your data. Examples of PII include HIPAA protected health information, Gramm-Leach-Bliley financial information, credit card information and any personal data which if disclosed could result in the theft of a person's identity.
How long will it take to provision my load balancer?
In most cases, it should take less than one minute for a load balancer to be provisioned once the API request is submitted. During periods of extreme system load, we anticipate no more than a few minutes for complete provisioning.
What is the maximum throughput of each load balancer?
A single Cloud Load Balancer is connected via 10Gb/second network to both the public and Rackspace's internal network, which we have tested to achieve about 9Gb/second of actual throughput. There are some limiting factors which may influence the actual throughput at any given time.
How can I raise the API limits?
To modify your imposed API rate limits, please contact Support.
Can the load balancer timeout value be increased?
Yes, by default the timeout value is set to 30 seconds, but you can increase this up to 120 seconds using the API. (Currently this feature isn’t available in the cloud control panel).
