Azure Load Balancer (Layer 4) - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Azure Load Balancer (Layer 4) Setup

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a simple Azure Load Balancer to distribute incoming traffic evenly across two virtual machines. This helps keep your app available and responsive, like having two cashiers open at a store to serve customers faster.

🎯 Goal: Create an Azure Load Balancer with a frontend IP configuration, backend pool with two virtual machines, and a load balancing rule to distribute TCP traffic on port 80.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a resource group named rg-loadbalancer

Create a public IP address named lbPublicIP

Create a load balancer named myLoadBalancer with a frontend IP configuration using lbPublicIP

Create a backend address pool named myBackendPool with two VM NICs: nicVM1 and nicVM2

Create a load balancing rule named httpRule to forward TCP traffic on port 80

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Azure Load Balancers help distribute network traffic to multiple servers, improving availability and performance for web apps, APIs, and services.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and infrastructure specialists use load balancers to build scalable and reliable cloud applications.

1

Create Resource Group and Public IP

Write Azure CLI commands to create a resource group named rg-loadbalancer in eastus and a public IP address named lbPublicIP in that resource group with SKU Standard and static allocation.

Azure

# Your code here to create resource group and public IP

Need a hint?

Use az group create to make the resource group, then az network public-ip create to make the public IP.

2

Create Load Balancer with Frontend IP Configuration

Write an Azure CLI command to create a load balancer named myLoadBalancer in resource group rg-loadbalancer using the public IP lbPublicIP as the frontend IP configuration named LoadBalancerFrontEnd.

Azure

az group create --name rg-loadbalancer --location eastus
az network public-ip create --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --name lbPublicIP --sku Standard --allocation-method Static
# Your code here to create load balancer with frontend IP

Need a hint?

Use az network lb create with --frontend-ip-name and --public-ip-address options.

3

Create Backend Address Pool with VM NICs

Write Azure CLI commands to create a backend address pool named myBackendPool in load balancer myLoadBalancer and add two network interfaces named nicVM1 and nicVM2 to this backend pool.

Azure

az group create --name rg-loadbalancer --location eastus
az network public-ip create --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --name lbPublicIP --sku Standard --allocation-method Static
az network lb create --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --name myLoadBalancer --sku Standard --frontend-ip-name LoadBalancerFrontEnd --public-ip-address lbPublicIP
# Your code here to create backend pool and add NICs

Need a hint?

First create the backend pool with az network lb address-pool create, then add NICs with az network nic ip-config address-pool add.

4

Create Load Balancing Rule for TCP Port 80

Write an Azure CLI command to create a load balancing rule named httpRule on load balancer myLoadBalancer in resource group rg-loadbalancer that forwards TCP traffic on port 80 from frontend IP LoadBalancerFrontEnd to backend pool myBackendPool.

Azure

az group create --name rg-loadbalancer --location eastus
az network public-ip create --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --name lbPublicIP --sku Standard --allocation-method Static
az network lb create --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --name myLoadBalancer --sku Standard --frontend-ip-name LoadBalancerFrontEnd --public-ip-address lbPublicIP
az network lb address-pool create --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --lb-name myLoadBalancer --name myBackendPool
az network nic ip-config address-pool add --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --nic-name nicVM1 --ip-config-name ipconfig1 --lb-name myLoadBalancer --address-pool myBackendPool
az network nic ip-config address-pool add --resource-group rg-loadbalancer --nic-name nicVM2 --ip-config-name ipconfig1 --lb-name myLoadBalancer --address-pool myBackendPool
# Your code here to create load balancing rule

Need a hint?

Use az network lb rule create with the correct ports, protocol, frontend IP, and backend pool names.