Quick start for load balancers

Quickly expose your app to the Internet by creating a layer 4 load balancer.

First time setting up a load balancer? Check out Classic: Setting up basic load balancing with an NLB 1.0 or VPC: Exposing apps with VPC load balancers for prerequisite steps, limitations, and more details. Come back to these quick start steps for a brief refresher the next time you set up a load balancer.

Exposing an app by using an NLB in a classic cluster

Expose your app by creating a version 1.0 network load balancer (NLB 1.0).

kubectl expose deploy my-app --port=80 --target-port=8080 --type=LoadBalancer --name my-lb-svc

Get the NLB 1.0 EXTERNAL-IP address.

kubectl get svc my-lb-svc

Example output

NAME        TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP     PORT(S)        AGE
my-lb-svc   LoadBalancer   172.XX.XXX.XX   169.XX.XXX.XX   80:31224/TCP   23s

Curl your app's IP address.
```
curl <external-ip>
```

Optional: Create a hostname for your app.

ibmcloud ks nlb-dns create classic -c <cluster_name_or_id> --ip <NLB_IP>

In a web browser, enter the hostname that is created. Example output

NLB hostname was created as mycluster-35366fb2d3d90fd50548180f69e7d12a-0001.us-south.containers.appdomain.cloud

For more information, see:

Exposing an app by using a VPC load balancer in a VPC cluster

Expose your app by creating a Kubernetes LoadBalancer service.

kubectl expose deploy my-app --port=80 --target-port=8080 --type=LoadBalancer --name my-lb-svc

Get the service's hostname that is listed in the EXTERNAL-IP column. The VPC load balancer that assigns the hostname takes a few minutes to provision in your VPC. You can't access your app by using the hostname of your Kubernetes LoadBalancer service until the VPC load balancer is fully provisioned.
```
kubectl get svc my-lb-svc
```
Example output
```
NAME        TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP                            PORT(S)        AGE
my-lb-svc   LoadBalancer   172.XX.XXX.XX   1234abcd-us-south.lb.appdomain.cloud   80:31224/TCP   23s
```
In a web browser, enter the hostname that is created.

For more information, see VPC: Exposing apps with VPC load balancers.