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Load Balancing in OpenShift: A Complete Guide

Andrios Robert

• 1 min read

The service is live, traffic is rising, and latency spikes without warning. You need control. You need a load balancer in OpenShift that can handle real demand without breaking.

OpenShift uses a layered approach to routing. At the top sits the OpenShift Router, based on HAProxy, which manages ingress traffic for applications. It balances load across pods and nodes while respecting Kubernetes service definitions. When configured correctly, it can scale horizontally and serve workloads across clusters.

A load balancer in OpenShift isn’t just a single tool—it’s a system. The Kubernetes Service object can expose applications internally or externally. For external access, you can use an OpenShift Route or a LoadBalancer-type Service, depending on the cluster’s environment. Public cloud integrations create native LoadBalancer resources. Bare metal or private clouds often rely on DNS and external HAProxy or NGINX instances.

Key load balancing methods in OpenShift include:

  • Round Robin: Evenly distributing traffic to each pod.
  • Least Connections: Sending requests to pods with the fewest active connections.
  • Source IP Hash: Maintaining session affinity across requests.

HTTP and TLS termination can be handled at the router. This reduces work for the application pods and centralizes SSL. Health checks ensure failing pods are removed from rotation. Rolling updates work seamlessly with load balancers, allowing zero-downtime deployments.

Scaling a load balancer in OpenShift means watching the router pods. Increase replicas when traffic grows. Tune HAProxy configuration for timeout values, max connections, and buffer sizes. Monitor metrics through Prometheus and adjust before a bottleneck forms.

Security is part of load balancing. Routes can enforce HTTPS. You can restrict source IP ranges and apply network policies to limit traffic flow. Using OpenShift’s native role-based access control ensures only authorized changes to load balancer configuration.

Get configuration right early. A misconfigured load balancer in OpenShift can bottleneck every application in the cluster. Measure performance after each change. Test failover. Automate provisioning to avoid manual drift.

If you want to skip the setup grind, see it live in minutes with hoop.dev and run full OpenShift load balancer workflows without digging through endless configs.