Load Balancing

    In the following example, you’ll use an application deployed across two different servers, or upstream targets. Kong Gateway needs to load balance across both servers, so that if one of the servers is unavailable, it automatically detects the problem and routes all traffic to the working server.

    An upstream refers to the service applications sitting behind Kong Gateway, to which client requests are forwarded. In Kong Gateway, an upstream represents a virtual hostname and can be used to health check, circuit break, and load balance incoming requests over multiple backend services.

    In this section, you’ll re-configure the service created earlier, () to point to an upstream instead of a specific host. For the purposes of our example, the upstream will point to two different targets, httpbin.org and mockbin.org. More commonly, targets will be instances of the same backend service running on different host systems.

    Here is a diagram illustrating the setup:

    In this section, you will create an upstream named example_upstream and add two targets to it.

    Start with the introduction, Get Kong, which includes a list of prerequisites and instructions for running a local Kong Gateway.

    Step two of the guide, , includes instructions for installing a mock service used throughout this series.

    If you haven’t completed these steps already, complete them before proceeding.

    Steps to enable load balancing

    1. Create an upstream

      Use the Admin API to create an upstream named :

    2. Create upstream targets

    3. Update the service

      In the section of this guide, you created example_service which pointed to an explicit host, http://mockbin.org. Now you’ll modify that service to point to the upstream instead:

      You now have an upstream with two targets, and mockbin.org, and a service pointing to that upstream.

    What’s next

    You’ve completed the Get Started with Kong guide, but a lot more is possible with . The following are guides to advanced features of Kong Gateway: