Exploring Network Load Balancer

This guide provides a step-by-step explanation of how to explore and utilize a Network Load Balancer.

Hafeez Baig
26 steps
2 minutes

Amazon Web Services

Refer to the following guide to learn how to use IAM in the cloud\ <https://scribehow.com/shared/Creating_an_IAM_User_and_User_Group_in_AWS_Management_Console__hWNiiXlcRJKFqYZZEJD-cg> Refer to this guide to learn how to create a Network Load Balancer\ <https://scribehow.com/shared/Creating_a_Network_Load_Balancer__DE9F1Nm5SbSI9eDK-4vrPA>

Sign in to **AWS Management Console** as an **IAM User** **Pre-requisite** - Ensure you have selected the AWS region closest to your location\ For this guide, we will be using us-east-2 (Ohio) as a preferred choice

Type **EC2** in the search bar and click on **EC2** to view the EC2 Dashboard

**What is EC2 in AWS?** Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a web service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows users to rent virtual computers (instances) on which they can run their own applications.

On the EC2 dashboard click on **Load Balancers** from the left bar to view the **Load Balancers**

**What are Load Balancers in EC2?** In Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), a load balancer is a service that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple instances (virtual servers) within an EC2 Auto Scaling group or across multiple Availability Zones to ensure optimal performance, fault tolerance, and scalability of the application

**Load balancers** wizard will open, select the Name **my-nework-load-balancer**

Scroll the page to the **DNS name** section and click on the copy widget to copy the **DNS name** URL

Paste the URL in a new tab, and you'll encounter an error message "**This site can't be reached**" due to the absence of inbound rules allowing HTTP traffic

Come back to the EC2 dashboard and click on the **Target Groups** from the left bar

**What are the Target Groups in EC2?** Target Groups in Amazon EC2 are logical groupings of instances or IP addresses that route traffic to one or more registered targets. They are used in conjunction with Elastic Load Balancers (ELB) and AWS Auto Scaling to efficiently distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, or Lambda functions.

**Target groups** wizard will open, select the Name **network-load-balancer-tg**

Scroll the page and click on the **Targets** tab

Scroll to the **Registered targets** section, here you will notice **Health status** is **Unhealthy**

To change the Security groups, click on the **Instances** from the left bar

**Instances** wizard will open, from the list of Instances select the instance **Launch Template** **Note:** Select the Instance that was added as a registered target during the creation of the Network Load Balancer.

Scroll the page, click on the **Security** tab and click on the Security group **launch-wizard-1** link

**Security group launch-wizard-1** wizard will open, scroll the page and click on the **Edit inbound rules** button on the right side

**Edit inbound rules** wizard will open, click on **Add rule** button

From the **Type** dropdown select the option **HTTP**

From the **Source** dropdown select the option **Anywhere-IPv4** and click on the **Save rules** button

Inbound security grouprules successfully modified on security group **launch-wizard-1**

Congratulations on successfully adding the inbound rule and modifying it! After modifying these target groups, you can successfully view the DNS webpage. These inbound rules allow any HTTP traffic from anywhere with an IPv4 address.

To view the **Load balancer Attributes**, click on the **Load Balancers** from the left bar

**Load balancers** wizard will open, on the right side click on the **Actions** dropdown button and select the option **Edit load balancer attributes**

**Edit load balancer attributes** wizard will open, scroll to the **Availability zone routing configuration** section

**What is Availability zone routing configuration?** Availability zone routing configuration refers to the setup within a load balancer that distributes incoming traffic evenly across multiple availability zones. This ensures high availability and fault tolerance by directing requests to instances in different zones, minimizing the impact of failures in any single zone.

Scroll to the **Load balancer targets selection policy**

**What is the Load balancer targets selection policy?** Load balancer target selection policy refers to the method used by a load balancer to distribute incoming requests among the registered targets. Different policies prioritize factors such as latency, request count, or IP hash to determine which target receives each request.

Scroll to the **Protection** section to enable and disable **Deletion protection**

**Why to enable Deletion protection?** Deletion protection in load balancers is a feature that prevents accidental deletion of the load balancer. When deletion protection is enabled, attempts to delete the load balancer through the AWS Management Console, CLI, or API are blocked.

Scroll to the option **Monitoring** to enable and disable **Access logs**

**Why enable the Access logs?** Enabling access logs for load balancers allows you to capture detailed information about requests made to your load balancer. By choosing an S3 URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) to store these logs, you can securely retain and analyze them for various purposes

Scroll the page and click on the **Save changes** button

To view and monitor the Network Load Balancer, on the **Load balancers** page scroll the page and click on the **Monitoring** tab You can view the **my-network-load-balancer** monitoring charts

Congratulations on exploring the concepts of the network load balancer! Completing this lab demonstrates your dedication to learning and understanding essential AWS services. Well done! In conclusion, we delved into network load balancers, covering target groups, attributes, security group settings, rules, and monitoring, offering a comprehensive overview of load balancer management in AWS.