Using nginx as HTTP load balancer

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Using nginx as HTTP load balancer

Load balancing methods
Default load balancing configuration
Least connected load balancing
Least time load balancing
Session persistence
Weighted load balancing
Health checks
Further reading

Introduction

Load balancing across multiple application instances is a commonly used
technique for optimizing resource utilization, maximizing throughput,
reducing latency, and ensuring fault-tolerant configurations.

It is possible to use nginx as a very efficient HTTP load balancer to
distribute traffic to several application servers and to improve
performance, scalability and reliability of web applications with nginx.

Load balancing methods

The following load balancing mechanisms (or methods) are supported in
nginx:

round-robin — requests to the application servers are distributed
in a round-robin fashion,

least-connected — next request is assigned to the server with the
least number of active connections,

ip-hash — a hash-function is used to determine what server should
be selected for the next request (based on the client’s IP address).

Default load balancing configuration

The simplest configuration for load balancing with nginx may look
like the following:

http {
upstream myapp1 {
server srv1.example.com;
server srv2.example.com;
server srv3.example.com;
}

server {
listen 80;

location / {
proxy_pass http://myapp1;
}
}
}

In the example above, there are 3 instances of the same application
running on srv1-srv3.
When the load balancing method is not specifically configured,
it defaults to round-robin.
All requests are

proxied to the server group myapp1, and nginx applies HTTP load
balancing to distribute the requests.

Reverse proxy implementation in nginx includes load balancing for HTTP,
HTTPS, FastCGI, uwsgi, SCGI, memcached, and gRPC.

To configure load balancing for HTTPS instead of HTTP, just use “https”
as the protocol.

When setting up load balancing for FastCGI, uwsgi, SCGI, memcached, or gRPC, use
fastcgi_pass,
uwsgi_pass,
scgi_pass,
memcached_pass, and
grpc_pass
directives respectively.

Least connected load balancing

Another load balancing discipline is least-connected.
Least-connected allows controlling the load on application
instances more fairly in a situation when some of the requests
take longer to complete.

With the least-connected load balancing, nginx will try not to overload a
busy application server with excessive requests, distributing the new
requests to a less busy server instead.

Least-connected load balancing in nginx is activated when the

least_conn directive is used as part of the server group configuration:

upstream myapp1 {
least_conn;
server srv1.example.com;
server srv2.example.com;
server srv3.example.com;
}

Least time load balancing

Another load balancing discipline is least-time.
Least-time selects the server with the lowest average response time
and the lowest number of active connections, taking into account
inflight requests.

With the least-time load balancing, nginx selects the server based on
which of the following parameters is specified in the

least_time directive:

header — time to receive the first byte from the server,

last_byte — time to receive the full response from the server,

last_byte inflight — time to receive the full response from
the server, taking into account incomplete requests.

Least-time load balancing in nginx is activated when the

least_time directive is used as part of the server group configuration:

upstream myapp1 {
least_time header;
server srv1.example.com;
server srv2.example.com;
server srv3.example.com;
}

Session persistence

Please note that with round-robin or least-connected load
balancing, each subsequent client’s request can be potentially
distributed to a different server.
There is no guarantee that the same client will be always
directed to the same server.

If there is the need to tie a client to a particular application server —
in other words, make the client’s session “sticky” or “persistent” in
terms of always trying to select a particular server — the ip-hash load
balancing mechanism can be used.

With ip-hash, the client’s IP address is used as a hashing key to
determine what server in a server group should be selected for the
client’s requests.
This method ensures that the requests from the same client
will always be directed to the same server
except when this server is unavailable.

To configure ip-hash load balancing, just add the
ip_hash
directive to the server (upstream) group configuration:

upstream myapp1 {
ip_hash;
server srv1.example.com;
server srv2.example.com;
server srv3.example.com;
}

Weighted load balancing

It is also possible to influence nginx load balancing algorithms even
further by using server weights.

In the examples above, the server weights are not configured which means
that all specified servers are treated as equally qualified for a
particular load balancing method.

With the round-robin in particular it also means a more or less equal
distribution of requests across the servers — provided there are enough
requests, and when the requests are processed in a uniform manner and
completed fast enough.

When the
weight
parameter is specified for a server, the weight is accounted as part
of the load balancing decision.

upstream myapp1 {
server srv1.example.com weight=3;
server srv2.example.com;
server srv3.example.com;
}

With this configuration, every 5 new requests will be distributed across
the application instances as the following: 3 requests will be directed
to srv1, one request will go to srv2, and another one — to srv3.

It is similarly possible to use weights with the least-connected and
ip-hash load balancing in the recent versions of nginx.

Health checks

Reverse proxy implementation in nginx includes in-band (or passive)
server health checks.
If the response from a particular server fails with an error,
nginx will mark this server as failed, and will try to
avoid selecting this server for subsequent inbound requests for a while.

The
max_fails
directive sets the number of consecutive unsuccessful attempts to
communicate with the server that should happen during
fail_timeout.
By default,
max_fails
is set to 1.
When it is set to 0, health checks are disabled for this server.
The
fail_timeout
parameter also defines how long the server will be marked as failed.
After
fail_timeout
interval following the server failure, nginx will start to gracefully
probe the server with the live client’s requests.
If the probes have been successful, the server is marked as a live one.

Further reading

In addition, there are more directives and parameters that control server
load balancing in nginx, e.g.
proxy_next_upstream,
backup,
down, and
keepalive.
For more information please check our
reference documentation.

Last but not least,
application load balancing,
application health checks,
activity monitoring and
on-the-fly reconfiguration of server groups are available
as part of our paid NGINX Plus subscriptions.