The Vultr Load Balancer is a fully-managed solution to distribute traffic across multiple back-end servers. In this guide, you'll learn how to distribute web traffic to multiple webservers via their private network interface.
If you are new to Vultr Load Balancers, we recommend reading the Load Balancer Quickstart Guide first.
Vultr's advanced load balancer supports private networks and has its own integrated firewall, which means you can set up configurations like this:
Here's a step-by-step guide to creating the configuration shown above.
Deploy three web servers in the same location.
In Load Balancer Configuration, enter a label and leave the other options at default.
Leave the default Forwarding Rule for HTTP at port 80.
In the Firewall Rules section, enter Port 80, and set the Source to cloudflare
.
Choose HTTP and Port 80 for Health Checks.
Click Add Load Balancer.
Wait for the Load Balancer to deploy.
Click your Load Balancer to edit its configuration.
Click Attach Instance.
Repeat steps 1 – 3 for each web server instance.
The Vultr configuration is complete, but you'll still need to configure DNS and add the Load Balancer's IP address at Cloudflare. See the Cloudflare getting started guide to complete those steps.
After completing the Cloudflare setup, your webservers are secure and load-balanced. The Cloudflare CDN accelerates the delivery of your static assets, and the Vultr Load Balancer provides high availability.
The Vultr Load Balancer is very flexible, and more advanced configurations are possible, such as combining the Vultr Firewall with the Load Balancer Firewall, like this.
Vultr Load Balancers also work with Private Networks, and you can combine multiple firewalls to create this configuration.
If you'd like to learn more, see our article How to Configure a Vultr Load Balancer with Private Networking.