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Load Balancers

OpenStack Octavia load balancers distribute inbound traffic across multiple servers. A load balancer consists of a VIP (virtual IP), one or more listeners, backend pools, and optional health monitors.

Endpoints

Method Path Description
GET /cloud/loadbalancers?project_id=<uuid> List load balancers
GET /cloud/loadbalancers/{id}?project_id=<uuid> Show a load balancer
GET /cloud/lb_listeners?project_id=<uuid> List listeners
GET /cloud/lb_pools?project_id=<uuid> List pools
GET /cloud/lb_pools?project_id=<uuid>&loadbalancer_id=<id> List pools for a load balancer
GET /cloud/lb_pool_members?project_id=<uuid>&pool_id=<id> List members of a pool
GET /cloud/lb_health_monitors?project_id=<uuid> List health monitors
GET /cloud/lb_health_monitors?project_id=<uuid>&pool_id=<id> List monitors for a pool

List load balancers

GET /cloud/loadbalancers?project_id=<uuid>
Authorization: Bearer <token>

Show a load balancer

GET /cloud/loadbalancers/{id}?project_id=<uuid>
Authorization: Bearer <token>

Key response fields:

Field Description
id Load balancer UUID
name Display name
provisioning_status ACTIVE, PENDING_CREATE, PENDING_UPDATE, ERROR
operating_status ONLINE, DEGRADED, OFFLINE, ERROR
vip_address Virtual IP address
vip_subnet_id Subnet the VIP is allocated from
vip_network_id Network the VIP belongs to
provider Octavia provider (e.g. amphora)
listeners Array of listener summary objects
pools Array of pool summary objects

Concepts

Listener — a port/protocol binding (e.g. TCP:443) that accepts inbound connections and forwards them to a pool.

Pool — a set of backend servers sharing a load-balancing algorithm (round-robin, least-connections, source-IP).

Member — a single backend server within a pool, identified by IP and port.

Health monitor — periodic probes (HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, PING) that mark members ONLINE or OFFLINE based on their response.

Creating load balancers

Create and modify load balancer resources through the dashboard or OpenStack CLI. The b'nerd API currently exposes read operations for observability — use provisioning_status and operating_status to monitor rollout progress from your automation.

  • Servers — the backend instances in your pools
  • Floating IPs — assign a public IP to the VIP (managed via the OpenStack dashboard or CLI)
  • Networks — the network the VIP is placed on