How to Balance internal traffic load with a Basic load balancer in the Azure portal

Load balancing provides a higher level of availability and scale by spreading incoming requests across virtual machines (VMs). You can use the Azure portal to create a Basic load balancer and balance internal traffic among VMs. This tutorial shows you how to create and configure an internal load balancer, back-end servers, and network resources at the Basic pricing tier.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

If you prefer, you can do these steps using the Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell instead of the portal.

To do the steps using this tutorial, sign in to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.

Create a VNet, back-end servers, and a test VM

First, create a virtual network (VNet). In the VNet, create two VMs to use for the back-end pool of your Basic load balancer, and a third VM to use for testing the load balancer.

Create a virtual network

1. On the upper-left side of the portal, select Create a resource > Networking > Virtual network.
2. In the Create virtual network pane, type or select these values:
   • Name: Type MyVNet.
   • ResourceGroup: Select Create new, then enter MyResourceGroupLB, and select OK.
   • Subnet > Name: Type MyBackendSubnet.
3. Select Create.
   

Create virtual machines

1. On the upper-left side of the portal, select Create a resource > Compute > Windows Server 2016 Datacenter.
2. In Create a virtual machine, type or select the following values in the Basics tab:
   • Subscription > Resource Group: Drop down and select MyResourceGroupLB.
   • Instance Details > Virtual machine name: Type MyVM1.
   • Instance Details > Availability Options:
     1. Drop down and select Availability set.
     2. Select Create new, type MyAvailabilitySet, and select OK.
3. Select the Networking tab, or select Next: Disks, then Next: Networking.
   Make sure the following are selected:
   • Virtual network: MyVNet
   • Subnet: MyBackendSubnet
   Under Network Security Group:
   1. Select Advanced.
   2. Drop down Configure network security group and select None.
4. Select the Management tab, or select Next > Management. Under Monitoring, set Boot diagnostics to Off.
5. Select Review + create.
6. Review the settings, and then select Create.
7. Follow the steps to create a second VM named MyVM2, with all the other settings the same as MyVM1.
8. Follow the steps again to create a third VM named MyTestVM.

Create a Basic load balancer

Create a Basic internal load balancer by using the portal. The name and IP address you create are automatically configured as the load balancer's front end.

1. On the upper-left side of the portal, select Create a resource > Networking > Load Balancer.
2. In the Basics tab of the Create load balancer page, enter or select the following information, accept the defaults for the remaining settings, and then select Review + create:

   Setting	Value
   Subscription	Select your subscription.
   Resource group	Select Create new and type MyResourceGroupLB in the text box.
   Name	myLoadBalancer
   Region	Select West Europe.
   Type	Select Internal.
   SKU	Select Basic.
   Virtual network	Select MyVNet.
   IP address assignment	Select Static.
   Private IP address	Type an address that is in the address space of your virtual network and subnet, for example 10.3.0.7.

3. In the Review + create tab, click Create.

Create Basic load balancer resources

In this section, you configure load balancer settings for a back-end address pool and a health probe, and specify load balancer rules.

Create a back-end address pool

To distribute traffic to the VMs, the load balancer uses a back-end address pool. The back-end address pool contains the IP addresses of the virtual network interfaces (NICs) that are connected to the load balancer.

To create a back-end address pool that includes VM1 and VM2:

1. Select All resources on the left menu, and then select MyLoadBalancer from the resource list.
2. Under Settings, select Backend pools, and then select Add.
3. On the Add a backend pool page, type or select the following values:
   • Name: Type MyBackendPool.
   • Associated to: Drop down and select Availability set.
   • Availability set: Select MyAvailabilitySet.
4. Select Add a target network IP configuration.
   1. Add MyVM1 and MyVM2 to the back-end pool.
   2. After you add each machine, drop down and select its Network IP configuration.
    Note

   Do not add MyTestVM to the pool.
5. Select OK.
   
6. On the Backend pools page, expand MyBackendPool and make sure both VM1 and VM2 are listed.

Create a health probe

To allow the load balancer to monitor VM status, you use a health probe. The health probe dynamically adds or removes VMs from the load balancer rotation based on their response to health checks.

To create a health probe to monitor the health of the VMs:

1. Select All resources on the left menu, and then select MyLoadBalancer from the resource list.
2. Under Settings, select Health probes, and then select Add.
3. On the Add a health probe page, type or select the following values:
   • Name: Type MyHealthProbe.
   • Protocol: Drop down and select HTTP.
   • Port: Type 80.
   • Path: Accept / for the default URI. You can replace this value with any other URI.
   • Interval: Type 15. Interval is the number of seconds between probe attempts.
   • Unhealthy threshold: Type 2. This value is the number of consecutive probe failures that occur before a VM is considered unhealthy.
4. Select OK.
   

Create a load balancer rule

A load balancer rule defines how traffic is distributed to the VMs. The rule defines the front-end IP configuration for incoming traffic, the back-end IP pool to receive the traffic, and the required source and destination ports.

The load balancer rule named MyLoadBalancerRule listens to port 80 in the front-end LoadBalancerFrontEnd. The rule sends network traffic to the back-end address pool MyBackendPool, also on port 80.

To create the load balancer rule:

1. Select All resources on the left menu, and then select MyLoadBalancer from the resource list.
2. Under Settings, select Load balancing rules, and then select Add.
3. On the Add load balancing rule page, type or select the following values, if not already present:
   • Name: Type MyLoadBalancerRule.
   • Frontend IP address: Type LoadBalancerFrontEnd if not present.
   • Protocol: Select TCP.
   • Port: Type 80.
   • Backend port: Type 80.
   • Backend pool: Select MyBackendPool.
   • Health probe: Select MyHealthProbe.
4. Select OK.
   

Test the load balancer

Install Internet Information Services (IIS) on the back-end servers, then use MyTestVM to test the load balancer using its private IP address. Each back-end VM serves a different version of the default IIS web page, so you can see the load balancer distribute requests between the two VMs.

In the portal, on the Overview page for MyLoadBalancer, find its IP address under Private IP Address. Hover over the address and select the Copy icon to copy it. In this example, it is 10.3.0.7.

Connect to the VMs with RDP

First, connect to all three VMs with Remote Desktop (RDP).

 Note:-

By default, the VMs already have the RDP (Remote Desktop) port open to allow remote desktop access.

To remote desktop (RDP) into the VMs:

1. In the portal, select All resources on the left menu. From the resource list, select each VM in the MyResourceGroupLB resource group.
2. On the Overview page, select Connect, and then select Download RDP file.
3. Open the RDP file you downloaded, and select Connect.
4. On the Windows Security screen, select More choices and then Use a different account.
   Enter username and password and then select OK.
5. Respond Yes to any certificate prompt.
   The VM desktop opens in a new window.

Install IIS and replace the default IIS page on the back-end VMs

On each back-end server, use PowerShell to install IIS and replace the default IIS web page with a customized page.

 Note:-

You can also use the Add Roles and Features Wizard in Server Manager to install IIS.

To install IIS and update the default web page with PowerShell:

1. On MyVM1 and on MyVM2, launch Windows PowerShell from the Start menu.
2. Run the following commands to install IIS and replace the default IIS web page:
   PowerShell:-

    # Install IIS
      Install-WindowsFeature -name Web-Server -IncludeManagementTools
   
    # Remove default htm file
     remove-item  C:\inetpub\wwwroot\iisstart.htm
   
    #Add custom htm file
     Add-Content -Path "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\iisstart.htm" -Value $("Hello World from " + $env:computername)
   

3. Close the RDP connections with MyVM1 and MyVM2 by selecting Disconnect. Do not shut down the VMs.

Test the load balancer

1. On MyTestVM, open Internet Explorer, and respond OK to any configuration prompts.
2. Paste or type the load balancer's private IP address (10.3.0.7) into the address bar of the browser.
   The customized IIS web server default page appears in the browser. The message reads either Hello World from MyVM1, or Hello World from MyVM2.
3. Refresh the browser to see the load balancer distribute traffic across VMs. You may also need to clear your browser cache between attempts.
   Sometimes the MyVM1 page appears, and other times the MyVM2 page appears, as the load balancer distributes the requests to each back-end VM.
   

Clean up resources

To delete the load balancer and all related resources when you no longer need them, open the MyResourceGroupLB resource group and select Delete resource group.