azure-switchboard 2026.2.7
Batteries-included loadbalancing client for Azure OpenAI
License: MIT
Requires Python: >=3.10
Keywords: ai, azure, litellm, llm, loadbalancing, openai

# Azure Switchboard

Batteries-included, coordination-free client loadbalancing for Azure OpenAI and OpenAI.

```bash
uv add azure-switchboard
```

[![PyPI - Version](https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/azure-switchboard)](https://pypi.org/project/azure-switchboard/)
[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-yellow.svg)](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
[![CI](https://github.com/arini-ai/azure-switchboard/actions/workflows/ci.yaml/badge.svg?branch=master)](https://github.com/arini-ai/azure-switchboard/actions/workflows/ci.yaml)

## Overview

`azure-switchboard` is a Python 3 asyncio library that provides an API-compatible client loadbalancer for Chat Completions. You instantiate a `Switchboard` with one or more `Deployment`s, and requests are distributed across healthy deployments using the [power of two random choices](https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/handbook2001.pdf) method. Deployments can point at Azure OpenAI (`base_url=.../openai/v1/`) or OpenAI (`base_url=None`).

## Features

- **API Compatibility**: `Switchboard.create` is a transparently-typed proxy for `OpenAI.chat.completions.create`.
- **Coordination-Free**: The default Two Random Choices algorithm does not require coordination between client instances to achieve excellent load distribution characteristics.
- **Utilization-Aware**: TPM/RPM utilization is tracked per model per deployment for use during selection.
- **Batteries Included**:
  - **Session Affinity**: Provide a `session_id` to route requests in the same session to the same deployment.
  - **Automatic Failover**: Retries are controlled by a tenacity `AsyncRetrying` policy (`failover_policy`).
  - **Pluggable Selection**: Custom selection algorithms can be provided by passing a callable to the `selector` parameter on the Switchboard constructor.
  - **OpenTelemetry Integration**: Built-in metrics for request routing and healthy deployment counts.
- **Lightweight**: Small codebase with minimal dependencies: `openai`, `tenacity`, `wrapt`, and `opentelemetry-api`.

## Runnable Example

```python
#!/usr/bin/env python3
#
# To run this, use:
#   uv run --env-file .env tools/readme_example.py
#
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.10"
# dependencies = [
#     "azure-switchboard",
# ]
# ///

import asyncio
import os

from azure_switchboard import Deployment, Model, Switchboard

azure_openai_endpoint = os.getenv("AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT")
azure_openai_api_key = os.getenv("AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY")
openai_api_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")

deployments = []
if azure_openai_endpoint and azure_openai_api_key:
    # create 3 deployments. reusing the endpoint
    # is fine for the purposes of this demo
    for name in ("east", "west", "south"):
        deployments.append(
            Deployment(
                name=name,
                base_url=f"{azure_openai_endpoint}/openai/v1/",
                api_key=azure_openai_api_key,
                models=[Model(name="gpt-4o-mini")],
            )
        )

if openai_api_key:
    deployments.append(
        Deployment(
            name="openai",
            api_key=openai_api_key,
            models=[Model(name="gpt-4o-mini")],
        )
    )

if not deployments:
    raise RuntimeError(
        "Set AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT/AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY or OPENAI_API_KEY to run this example."
    )


async def main():
    async with Switchboard(deployments=deployments) as sb:
        print("Basic functionality:")
        await basic_functionality(sb)

        print("Session affinity (should warn):")
        await session_affinity(sb)


async def basic_functionality(switchboard: Switchboard):
    # Make a completion request (non-streaming)
    response = await switchboard.create(
        model="gpt-4o-mini",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello, world!"}],
    )

    print("completion:", response.choices[0].message.content)

    # Make a streaming completion request
    stream = await switchboard.create(
        model="gpt-4o-mini",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello, world!"}],
        stream=True,
    )

    print("streaming: ", end="")
    async for chunk in stream:
        if chunk.choices and chunk.choices[0].delta.content:
            print(chunk.choices[0].delta.content, end="", flush=True)

    print()


async def session_affinity(switchboard: Switchboard):
    session_id = "anything"

    # First message will select a random healthy
    # deployment and associate it with the session_id
    r = await switchboard.create(
        session_id=session_id,
        model="gpt-4o-mini",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Who won the World Series in 2020?"}],
    )

    d1 = switchboard.select_deployment(model="gpt-4o-mini", session_id=session_id)
    print("deployment 1:", d1)
    print("response 1:", r.choices[0].message.content)

    # Follow-up requests with the same session_id will route to the same deployment
    r2 = await switchboard.create(
        session_id=session_id,
        model="gpt-4o-mini",
        messages=[
            {"role": "user", "content": "Who won the World Series in 2020?"},
            {"role": "assistant", "content": r.choices[0].message.content},
            {"role": "user", "content": "Who did they beat?"},
        ],
    )

    print("response 2:", r2.choices[0].message.content)

    # Simulate a failure by marking down the deployment
    d1.models["gpt-4o-mini"].mark_down()

    # A new deployment will be selected for this session_id
    r3 = await switchboard.create(
        session_id=session_id,
        model="gpt-4o-mini",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Who won the World Series in 2021?"}],
    )

    d2 = switchboard.select_deployment(model="gpt-4o-mini", session_id=session_id)
    print("deployment 2:", d2)
    print("response 3:", r3.choices[0].message.content)
    assert d2 != d1


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())
```

## Benchmarks

```bash
just bench
uv run --env-file .env tools/bench.py -v -r 1000 -d 10 -e 500
Distributing 1000 requests across 10 deployments
Max inflight requests: 1000

Request 500/1000 completed
Utilization Distribution:
0.000 - 0.200 |   0
0.200 - 0.400 |  10 ..............................
0.400 - 0.600 |   0
0.600 - 0.800 |   0
0.800 - 1.000 |   0
Avg utilization: 0.339 (0.332 - 0.349)
Std deviation: 0.006

{
    'bench_0': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.361, 'tpm': '10556/30000', 'rpm': '100/300'}},
    'bench_1': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.339, 'tpm': '9819/30000', 'rpm': '100/300'}},
    'bench_2': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.333, 'tpm': '9405/30000', 'rpm': '97/300'}},
    'bench_3': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.349, 'tpm': '10188/30000', 'rpm': '100/300'}},
    'bench_4': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.346, 'tpm': '10210/30000', 'rpm': '99/300'}},
    'bench_5': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.341, 'tpm': '10024/30000', 'rpm': '99/300'}},
    'bench_6': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.343, 'tpm': '10194/30000', 'rpm': '100/300'}},
    'bench_7': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.352, 'tpm': '10362/30000', 'rpm': '102/300'}},
    'bench_8': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.35, 'tpm': '10362/30000', 'rpm': '102/300'}},
    'bench_9': {'gpt-4o-mini': {'util': 0.365, 'tpm': '10840/30000', 'rpm': '101/300'}}
}

Utilization Distribution:
0.000 - 0.100 |   0
0.100 - 0.200 |   0
0.200 - 0.300 |   0
0.300 - 0.400 |  10 ..............................
0.400 - 0.500 |   0
0.500 - 0.600 |   0
0.600 - 0.700 |   0
0.700 - 0.800 |   0
0.800 - 0.900 |   0
0.900 - 1.000 |   0
Avg utilization: 0.348 (0.333 - 0.365)
Std deviation: 0.009

Distribution overhead: 926.14ms
Average response latency: 5593.77ms
Total latency: 17565.37ms
Requests per second: 1079.75
Overhead per request: 0.93ms
```

Distribution overhead scales ~linearly with the number of deployments.

## Configuration Reference

### switchboard.Model Parameters

| Parameter          | Description                                                            | Default       |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------- |
| `name`             | Model name as sent to Chat Completions                                 | Required      |
| `tpm`              | Tokens-per-minute budget used for utilization tracking and routing     | 0 (unlimited) |
| `rpm`              | Requests-per-minute budget used for utilization tracking and routing   | 0 (unlimited) |
| `default_cooldown` | Cooldown duration (seconds) after a deployment/model failure mark-down | 10.0          |

### switchboard.Deployment Parameters

| Parameter  | Description                                                                                          | Default                      |
| ---------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- |
| `name`     | Unique identifier for the deployment                                                                 | Required                     |
| `base_url` | API base URL. Azure example: `https://<resource>.openai.azure.com/openai/v1/`. OpenAI: leave `None`. | None                         |
| `api_key`  | API key for the deployment                                                                           | None                         |
| `timeout`  | Default request timeout (seconds)                                                                    | 600.0                        |
| `models`   | Models available on this deployment                                                                  | Built-in model name defaults |

### switchboard.Switchboard Parameters

| Parameter          | Description                                                                  | Default                                                                                                        |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `deployments`      | List of deployment configs                                                   | Required                                                                                                       |
| `selector`         | Deployment selection function `(model, eligible_deployments) -> deployment`  | `two_random_choices`                                                                                           |
| `failover_policy`  | Tenacity `AsyncRetrying` policy used around each `create` call               | `AsyncRetrying(stop=stop_after_attempt(2), retry=retry_if_not_exception_type(SwitchboardError), reraise=True)` |
| `ratelimit_window` | How often usage counters reset (seconds). Set `0` to disable periodic reset. | 60.0                                                                                                           |
| `max_sessions`     | LRU capacity for session affinity map                                        | 1024                                                                                                           |

## Development

This project uses [uv](https://github.com/astral-sh/uv) for package management,
and [just](https://github.com/casey/just) for task automation. See the [justfile](https://github.com/arini-ai/azure-switchboard/blob/master/justfile)
for available commands.

```bash
git clone https://github.com/arini-ai/azure-switchboard
cd azure-switchboard

just install
```

### Running tests

```bash
just test
```

### Release

This library uses CalVer for versioning. On push to master, if tests pass, a package is automatically built, released, and uploaded to PyPI.

Locally, the package can be built with uv:

```bash
uv build
```

### OpenTelemetry Integration

`azure-switchboard` uses OpenTelemetry metrics via the meter `azure_switchboard.switchboard`.

Metrics emitted on the request path include:

- `healthy_deployments_count` (gauge)
- `requests` (counter, with deployment + model attributes)

To run with local OTEL instrumentation:

```bash
just otel-run
```

## Contributing

1. Fork/clone repo
2. Make changes
3. Run tests with `just test`
4. Lint with `just lint`
5. Commit and make a PR

## License

MIT