Create pools
Instead of starting on your production domain, you likely should create a load balancer on a test or staging domain. This may involve temporary changes to your monitors and pools, depending on your infrastructure setup.
Starting with a test domain allows you to verify everything is working correctly before routing production traffic.
You can create a pool within the load balancer workflow or in the Pools section of the dashboard:
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Go to Traffic > Load Balancing.
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Select Manage Pools and then Create.
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For your pool, enter the following information:
- A name (must be unique)
- A description to provide more detail on the name
- A choice for Endpoint Steering, which affects how your pool routes traffic to each endpoint
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For each endpoint, enter the following information:
- A name (must be unique)
- The endpoint address or associated hostname
- (Optional) A Virtual Network. Required when the endpoint has a private IP address.
- A Weight
- (Optional) A hostname by clicking Add host header
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Repeat this process for additional endpoints in the pool.
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(Optional) Set up coordinates for Proximity Steering on the pool.
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On the pool, update the following information:
- Health Threshold:
The Health Threshold is the number of healthy endpoints for the pool as a whole to be considered Healthy and receive traffic based on pool order in a load balancer. Increasing this number makes the pool more reliable, but also more likely to become unhealthy.
- Monitor: Attach a monitor
- Health Monitor Regions: Choose whether to check pool health from multiple locations, which increases accuracy but can lead to probe traffic to your endpoint
- Pool Notifications: You can set up new alerts - and view existing alerts - to be notified when pools are enabled or disabled, or pools or endpoints have changes in their health status.
- Health Threshold:
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When finished, select Save.
For a full list of properties, refer to Create Pool. If you need help with API authentication, refer to Cloudflare API documentation.
curl "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/load_balancers/pools" \--header "Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>" \--header "Content-Type: application/json" \--data '{ "description": "Primary data center - Provider XYZ", "name": "primary-dc-1", "enabled": false, "load_shedding": { "default_percent": 0, "default_policy": "random", "session_percent": 0, "session_policy": "hash" }, "minimum_origins": 2, "monitor": "f1aba936b94213e5b8dca0c0dbf1f9cc", "check_regions": [ "WEU", "ENAM" ], "origins": [ { "name": "app-server-1", "address": "0.0.0.0", "enabled": true, "weight": 0.56, "header": { "Host": [ "example.com" ] } } ], "origin_steering": { "policy": "random" }, "notification_filter": { "origin": { "disable": false, "healthy": null }, "pool": { "disable": false, "healthy": null } }}'The response contains the complete definition of the new pool.
{ "success": true, "errors": [], "messages": [], "result": { "id": "17b5962d775c646f3f9725cbc7a53df4", "created_on": "2021-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z", "modified_on": "2021-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z", "description": "Primary data center - Provider XYZ", "name": "primary-dc-1", "enabled": false, "load_shedding": { "default_percent": 0, "default_policy": "random", "session_percent": 0, "session_policy": "hash" }, "minimum_origins": 2, "monitor": "f1aba936b94213e5b8dca0c0dbf1f9cc", "check_regions": [ "WEU", "ENAM" ], "origins": [ { "name": "app-server-1", "address": "0.0.0.0", "enabled": true, "weight": 0.56, "header": { "Host": [ "example.com" ] } } ], "origin_steering": { "policy": "random" }, "notification_filter": { "origin": { "disable": false, "healthy": null }, "pool": { "disable": false, "healthy": null } } }}After creating the pool, you would also want to create a new notification with the following parameters specified:
"alert_type": "load_balancing_health_alert","filters": { "pool_id": <<ARRAY_OF_INCLUDED_POOL_IDS>>, "new_health": <<ARRAY_OF_STATUS_TRIGGERS>> ["Unhealthy", "Healthy"], "event_source": <<ARRAY_OF_OBJECTS_WATCHED>> ["pool", "origin"]}