Layer 7 (L7) load balancing is supported for HTTP and HTTPS traffic only. Layer 7 policies and rules A Layer 7 policy is associated with a front-end application port. Multiple policies can be associated with a front-end port. These policies are evaluated in order, based on the priority assigned to each policy. An associated action is taken when the policy is matched. Each L7 rule is associated with a policy.

Layer 7 rule Layer 7 rules define a portion of the incoming traffic that is to be matched with specific values. Adding L7 rules is not allowed for any L7 policy with REDIRECT_HTTPS action. If the incoming traffic matches the specified value of a rule, then the rule evaluates to true. Layer 7 rules are always associated with a Layer 7 policy. Multiple Layer 7 rules can be associated with the same Layer 7 policy.

Layer 7 pool A Layer 7 (L7) pool is a logical grouping of the servers (members) for handling incoming requests. The Layer 7 load balancing feature can direct the incoming traffic to different back-end pools based on the policies and rules. This feature is supported by associating multiple L7 pools with a load balancer. Layer 7 pools are used with the Layer 7 policies whose action is redirect to pool.

Layer 7 rules Layer 7 rules define a portion of the incoming traffic that is to be matched with specific values. If the incoming traffic matches the specified value of a rule, then the rule evaluates to true. Layer 7 rules are always associated with a Layer 7 policy. Multiple Layer 7 rules can be associated with the same Layer 7 policy. If multiple rules are associated with a policy, then each rule is evaluated to be true or false.

You can also use the Layer 7 tab to configure Layer 7 load balancing.

IBM Cloud® Network Load Balancer for VPC monitoring metrics are provided with IBM Cloud Monitoring, a monitoring service that specializes in data aggregation, usage alerts, and in-depth visualizations. For more information, see IBM Cloud Monitoring.

IBM Cloud® Application Load Balancer for VPC (ALB) monitoring metrics are provided with IBM Cloud® Monitoring, a service that specializes in data aggregation, usage alerts, and in-depth visualizations. For more information, see Getting started with IBM Cloud Monitoring.

If you have public and private workloads and layer 7 traffic, use an application load balancer. Types of application load balancers As discussed in the Load balancers for VPC overview, you can create a public or private ALB. This table shows a comparison of public versus private features.

Layer 7 support HTTP/HTTPS traffic is routed to different back-end services based on the HTTP header, and is done by using policies and rules. Rules are used to classify the traffic and are based on the HTTP header fields. When the traffic matches all the rules, an action that is specified by the policy is taken. Multi-Zone Region (MZR) support: Load balancer nodes are instantiated in different data centers of an MZR.

Recovering a deleted database instance When a service instance is deleted, it is put in a suspend state for 7 days after which its removed. The deleted instance can be recovered within 7 days of deletion by following these steps. The user must be logged into their IBMCloud account to be able to recover an instance.