One of the most frequently requested Rancher features, load balancers are used to distribute traffic between docker containers. Now Rancher users can configure, update and scale up an integrated load balancing service to meet their application needs, using either Rancher’s UI or API. To implement our load balancing functionality we decided to use HAproxy, which is deployed as a contianer, and managed by the Rancher orchestration functionality.
With Rancher’s Load Balancing capability, users are now able to use a consistent, portable load balancing service on any infrastructure where they can run Docker. Whether it is running in a public cloud, private cloud, lab, cluster, or even on a laptop, any container can be a target for the load balancer.