Make high availability simple and affordable with NodeBalancers — a fully managed regional load balancing service on Akamai Cloud. Whether you’re running critical business applications or scaling web services, NodeBalancers combine automated failover, intuitive management, and flat, transparent pricing to keep services online without unnecessary complexity.
Distribute traffic across back-end servers and Kubernetes clusters for horizontal scale.
Use built-in DDoS protection, SSL/TLS support, and automated monitoring to keep apps secure and responsive.
Balance TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS workloads over HTTP/1.1.
Automate provisioning and changes via API, or manage through Cloud Manager.
Why NodeBalancers for high availability on Akamai Cloud
Automatic failover and health checks. Passive checks occur on every request, and configurable active monitoring quickly detects and removes unhealthy nodes.
Session persistence. Keep user sessions consistent by routing subsequent requests to the same back-end server.
SSL/TLS termination. Terminate HTTPS at the load balancer with configurable rules while preserving the requester’s IP information.
Predictable performance across all regions. Deploy NodeBalancers where you run compute, with dedicated IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
Simple, flat pricing. Know your costs upfront — each NodeBalancer starts at $10/month ($0.015/hour), with regional variations. See pricing.
Secure by default. DDoS protection and customizable client connection limits help safeguard back-end resources.
Consolidated traffic distribution. Balance multiple services across different ports using a single NodeBalancer.
API-driven operations. Use the Linode API to automate configuration, scaling, and integration with your CI/CD workflows.
Efficient resource use. Share your account’s network transfer quota among compute and NodeBalancers to avoid waste.
Features
SSL/TLS termination with configurable rules; requester IP preserved
TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS load balancing (HTTP/1.1)
Session persistence for application consistency
Passive per-request checks and configurable active health monitoring
Automated scaling and configuration via API
Multi-service balancing on a single NodeBalancer (multiple ports)
Each NodeBalancer starts at $10/month ($0.015/hour). Pricing may vary by region. See pricing details.
How NodeBalancers stack up for production use
Reliability and availability. Automated failover with both passive and active health checks helps ensure production resilience and quick recovery from node failures.
Core L4/L7 capabilities without bloat. You get SSL termination, session stickiness, and health monitoring for common production patterns on web apps, APIs, and microservices.
Operational simplicity. Flat, per-balancer pricing and straightforward configuration reduce operational overhead compared with complex, usage-based models.
Cloud-native friendly. Scale out easily as traffic grows; distribute across VMs or containerized workloads.
If you need multi-region or global traffic steering, pair regional NodeBalancers with Akamai’s edge-based traffic management services available in the Content Delivery portfolio, such as Global Traffic Management, to coordinate failover across regions.
Handling SSL termination, session persistence, and health monitoring
SSL/TLS termination: Configure certificates and terminate HTTPS at the NodeBalancer; origin IP information is preserved so back ends can log client IPs.
Session persistence: Route subsequent requests to the same back-end to maintain session continuity for stateful apps.
Health monitoring: Use passive checks on every request and enable active health checks to detect, isolate, and recover from failures automatically.
These capabilities cover the core needs many teams look for in a managed load balancer, while keeping setup and billing simple.
What to look for in a managed load balancer (and how NodeBalancers align)
High availability and auto failover. Look for active and passive health checks, fast node eviction, and seamless failback. NodeBalancers provide all of the above.
SSL/TLS flexibility. Termination at the balancer and the ability to preserve client IP. NodeBalancers support termination and preserve IP details.
Session persistence options. Essential for stateful applications and consistent user experiences. NodeBalancers support sticky sessions.
Protocol support. TCP and HTTP/HTTPS support for common web, API, and service traffic. NodeBalancers support TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS over HTTP/1.1.
Predictable pricing. Flat, transparent costs to avoid surprises in production. NodeBalancers use simple per‑balancer pricing.
Regional availability and dedicated addressing. Run where your workloads are, with dedicated IPv4/IPv6. NodeBalancers are available across Akamai Cloud regions and include dedicated addresses.
Operational automation. A robust API for CI/CD and IaC workflows. NodeBalancers are fully automatable via the Linode API.
Security. Built-in DDoS protection and connection limits to protect origins. NodeBalancers include both.
For cloud-native and Kubernetes workloads
Distribute traffic across containerized services or node pools to scale horizontally as demand grows.
Keep services resilient with health checks and automatic failover when nodes become unhealthy.
Use API-driven workflows to integrate load balancer provisioning and updates into your pipelines.
For global distribution or multi-region DR, complement NodeBalancers with Akamai’s edge traffic management solutions to orchestrate region-level failover.