Create a Gateway Load Balancer

A Gateway Load Balancer takes requests from clients and distributes them across targets in a target group, such as EC2 instances.

Before you begin, ensure that the virtual private cloud (VPC) for your Gateway Load Balancer has at least one subnet in each Availability Zone where you have targets.

To create a Gateway Load Balancer using the AWS CLI, see Getting started using the CLI.

To create a Gateway Load Balancer using the AWS Management Console, complete the following tasks.

Step 1: Configure your target group and register targets

You can register targets, such as EC2 instances, with a target group. You'll use the target group that you configure in this step when you configure your load balancer in the next step. For more information, see Target groups.

To configure your target group

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, under Load Balancing, choose Target Groups.

3. Choose Create target group.

4. Basic configuration

   1. For Choose a target type, select Instances to specify targets by instance ID, or select IP addresses to specify targets by IP address.

   2. For Target group name, enter a name for the target group.

   3. Verify that Protocol is GENEVE and Port is 6081. No other protocols or ports are supported.

   4. For VPC, select a virtual private cloud (VPC) with the instances to include in your target group.

5. (Optional) For Health checks, modify the settings and advanced settings as needed. If health checks consecutively exceed the Unhealthy threshold count, the load balancer takes the target out of service. If health checks consecutively exceed the Healthy threshold count, the load balancer puts the target back in service. For more information, see Health checks for your target groups.

6. (Optional) Expand Tags and add tags.

7. Choose Next.

8. For Register targets, add one or more targets as follows:

   • If the target type is Instances, select one or more instances, enter one or more ports, and then choose Include as pending below.

   • If the target type is IP addresses, select the network, enter the IP address and ports, and then choose Include as pending below.

9. Choose Create target group.

Step 2: Configure the load balancer and listener

Use the following procedure to create your Gateway Load Balancer. Provide basic configuration information for your load balancer, such as a name and IP address type. Then provide information about your network, and the IP listener that routes traffic to your target groups. Only target groups with GENEVE are available for use with the Gateway Load Balancer.

To create a Gateway Load Balancer

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. In the navigation pane, under Load Balancing, choose Load Balancers.

3. Choose Create Load Balancer.

4. Under Gateway Load Balancer, choose Create.

5. Basic configuration

   1. For Load balancer name, enter a name for your load balancer. For example, my-glb. The name of your Gateway Load Balancer must be unique within your set of load balancers for the Region. It can have a maximum of 32 characters, can contain only alphanumeric characters and hyphens, and must not begin or end with a hyphen.

   2. For IP address type, choose IPv4 to support IPv4 addresses only or Dualstack to support both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

6. Network mapping

   1. For VPC, select the service provider VPC.

   2. For Mappings, select all of the Availability Zones in which you launched security appliance instances, and the corresponding public subnets.

7. IP listener routing

   1. For Default action, select a target group to forward traffic to. If you don't have a target group, create one first. The target group must use the GENEVE protocol.

8. (Optional) Expand Tags and add tags.

9. Review your configuration, and then choose Create load balancer.

Important next steps

After creating your load balancer, verify that your EC2 instances have passed the initial health check. To test your load balancer, you must create a Gateway Load Balancer endpoint and update your route table to make the Gateway Load Balancer endpoint the next hop. These configurations are set within the Amazon VPC console. For more information, see Step 3: Create a Gateway Load Balancer endpoint and Step 4: Configure routing in the Getting started with Gateway Load Balancers section.