This topic provides release notes and references for Server Load Balancer (SLB).
April 2026
Feature | Change type | Description | References |
ALB Advanced Edition region and availability zone updates | Update | ALB Advanced Edition now supports the following regions and availability zones:
| |
NLB availability zone update | Update | NLB now supports availability zone C in the China (Chengdu) region. |
March 2026
Feature name | Change type | Description | Related links |
ALB Enhanced WAF region updates | Update | ALB Enhanced WAF is now available in the UAE (Dubai), China (Heyuan). |
February 2026
Feature name | Change type | Description | Related links |
ALB supports SM certificates | Update | For customers in regulated industries such as finance and government, or those with MLPS Level 3 requirements, ALB serves as the traffic entry point and can parse SM certificates. It supports authentication and offloading for both SM and non-SM certificates. |
January 2026
Feature name | Change type | Description | Related links |
GWLB zone update | Update | GWLB is now available in zone E of the China (Shanghai) region. | |
ALB zone update | Update | ALB is now available in zone E of the Japan (Tokyo) region. | |
Public preview of ALB Extensible Edition | New | ALB Extensible Edition delivers core traffic governance features, such as identity authentication and content-based routing, through flexible service extensions. It also introduces AI-native features, including multi-model proxying, load-aware routing, and token-based rate limiting. It serves as an integrated and intelligent traffic gateway for both AI and traditional applications. | |
NLB zone update | Update | NLB is now available in zone E of the Japan (Tokyo) region. | |
NLB dual-stack instances support affinity-based forwarding for IPv4/v6 traffic | New | NLB dual-stack instances now support IP version affinity mode. When this mode is enabled, NLB forwards IPv4 requests to IPv4 backend servers and IPv6 requests to IPv6 backend servers. This feature lets you schedule traffic based on the IP protocol version and simplifies your network architecture. |
December 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
New region support for Gateway Load Balancer | Update | Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) now supports the UAE (Dubai) region. | |
Expanded region support for ALB with Function Compute backends | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports Function Compute as backends in the following regions: South Korea (Seoul), Thailand (Bangkok), and UK (London). | |
Increased maximum quota for ALB connection timeouts | Update | Upgraded ALB instances now support a maximum listener connection request timeout and connection idle timeout of 3,600 seconds. | |
New availability zone support for Network Load Balancer | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports availability zone D in the China (Ulanqab) region. | |
New availability zone support for Application Load Balancer | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports availability zone D in the China (Ulanqab) region. |
November 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
GWLB support for new region | Update | GWLB is now available in SAU (Riyadh - Partner Region). |
October 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
NLB availability zone update | Update | NLB is now available in availability zone B of the Philippines (Manila) region. | |
ALB availability zone update | Update | ALB is now available in availability zone B of the Philippines (Manila) region. | |
ALB LCU reservation | New | ALB now supports LCU reservation. This feature lets you pre-allocate a specific number of load balancer capacity units (LCUs) for an ALB instance to guarantee minimum performance. The instance continues to autoscale based on traffic, but its performance will not fall below the configured reserved capacity. |
September 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
Expanded region support for ALB | Update |
|
August 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
ALB: Increased configuration range for timeouts | Update | You can now set the | |
GWLB: Now generally available | Update | Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) is now generally available (GA), concluding its public preview and promotional free period. Standard billing now applies. | |
NLB: New availability zone | Update | NLB is now available in availability zone B of the UAE (Dubai) region. | |
NLB: Expanded region support for TCP/SSL listeners | Update | NLB |
July 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
Configurable TCP connection idle timeout for GWLB | Update | You can now customize the TCP connection idle timeout for GWLB IP listeners. This feature applies only to backend server groups that use the 5-tuple hash scheduling algorithm. | |
New LCU Calculator for GWLB | New | You can use the GWLB LCU Calculator to estimate your LCU consumption. | |
ALB availability zone update | Update | ALB is now available in the following new availability zones: availability zone B in the Korea (Seoul) region, availability zone C in the Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) region, and availability zone B in the Thailand (Bangkok) region. | |
NLB availability zone update | Update | NLB is now available in the following new availability zones: availability zone B in China (Hangzhou), availability zone A in Mexico (Querétaro), availability zone B in Thailand (Bangkok), availability zone B in Korea (Seoul), and availability zone C in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur). | |
NLB launches in a new region | Update | NLB is now available in the UAE (Dubai) region. | |
New cipher suites for NLB TLS security policies | Update | NLB TLS security policies now support the following cipher suites: ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 and ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305. These cipher suites are only available for custom TLS security policies. |
June 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Related links |
GWLB: New zone support | Update | GWLB now supports zone A in the Japan (Tokyo) region. |
May 2025
Feature name | Change type | Description | Related links |
ALB supports instance cloning | New | ALB now supports instance cloning, letting you quickly create an instance that is identical or similar to a source instance. This feature is ideal for rapid environment deployment, disaster recovery and backup, and configuration migration, improving deployment efficiency and service continuity. | |
ALB dual-stack available in new regions | Update | ALB dual-stack is now available in the following regions: Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), South Korea (Seoul), Philippines (Manila), and Thailand (Bangkok). | |
ALB availability zone update | Update | ALB is now available in availability zone C of the China (Ulanqab) region and availability zone B of the China (Hangzhou) region. | |
ALB TLS security policies support new cipher suites | Update | ALB TLS security policies now support the | |
NLB supports instance diagnosis | New | NLB is now integrated with Network Intelligence Service (NIS) to provide instance diagnosis. This feature diagnoses the configuration and running status of your instances and provides results with recommended solutions. | |
CLB supports instance diagnosis | New | CLB is now integrated with Network Intelligence Service (NIS) to provide instance diagnosis. This feature diagnoses the configuration and running status of your instances and provides results with recommended solutions. | |
NLB health checks support HTTP version selection | Update | NLB health checks now let you select either HTTP1.0 (default) or HTTP1.1 as the protocol version. |
April 2025
Feature name | Change type | Description | Related links |
ALB health checks support resource groups | Update | You can now manage ALB health checks using resource groups. | |
ALB mutual authentication supports custom CA certificates | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports self-signed CA certificates for mutual authentication. You can upload a self-signed root or intermediate CA certificate to the certificate center. ALB then uses the certificate from the certificate center. | |
ALB is now available in a new region | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports the Mexico (Mexico City) region. | |
GWLB now supports traffic rebalancing | New | You can enable rebalancing on a server group. If a backend server becomes unavailable, GWLB automatically reroutes its traffic to healthy servers within the group. | |
NLB now supports local IP elasticity | Update | When client IP preservation is disabled for an NLB server group, each NLB instance in an availability zone can support up to 60,000 concurrent connections to a single backend server. If this limit is exceeded, NLB automatically allocates a new local IP to prevent port allocation failures. |
March 2025
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
Function Compute 3.0 as a backend service for ALB | Update | ALB now supports Function Compute 3.0 as a backend service. | |
New region available for NLB | Update | Network Load Balancer is now available in the Mexico (Mexico City) region. | |
New region available for NLB resource plans | Update | NLB resource plans are now available in the Mexico (Mexico City) region. |
February 2025
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB instance upgrade | Update | Upgraded ALB instances no longer differentiate between IP modes. Instead, they automatically scale virtual IP addresses (VIPs) to support up to 1 million QPS per instance. Upgraded ALB instances also include the following:
| |
CLB is now available in a new region | Update | Classic Load Balancer (CLB) is now available in the Mexico (Mexico City) region. |
December 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB supports optimization by adding HTTP headers. | Update |
| |
CLB supports scheduled O&M events. | New | CLB scheduled O&M events are events where Alibaba Cloud notifies you in advance about the impact on a load balancer instance before performing updates, maintenance, or network migration. You receive advance notification, allowing you to adjust the maintenance window and create a response plan to minimize business impact. | |
CLB billing adjustments | Update | Billing item rename: The instance fee is renamed to "public IP retention fee". The price remains the same. This fee is charged only on internet-facing instances. [New Billing Item] The new instance fee applies to all public network or internal-facing CLB instances created after 00:00:00 on December 1, 2024. |
November 2024
Feature | Change type | Description | Related documentation |
ALB now supports disabling cross-AZ load balancing | New | When cross-AZ load balancing is disabled for a server group attached to an Application Load Balancer (ALB) instance, ALB distributes traffic only among backend services in the same availability zone. This reduces cross-AZ data transfer latency and improves application performance. | |
ALB can now serve as a multi-cluster gateway for ACK One | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now connects to multiple clusters through ACK One. This lets you quickly build local and geo-disaster recovery systems for applications in hybrid cloud and multi-cluster environments and provides efficient traffic management and governance. | |
Support for automatic migration from Nginx Ingress to ALB Ingress | New | When you migrate from Nginx Ingress to ALB Ingress, the ACK migration tool automatically converts Nginx Ingress configurations to the ALB Ingress format. This eliminates the need for manual conversion, making the migration faster and more secure. | |
Domain name upgrade for ALB and NLB | Update | Starting from 00:00:00 on November 15, 2024 (UTC+8), newly created ALB and NLB instances will use upgraded domain names by default. You can no longer access instances using the default domain names provided by the Alibaba Cloud platform. |
October 2024
Feature name | Change type | Description | Related links |
ALB dual-stack support in new regions | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports dual-stack in the UK (London), US (Silicon Valley), and Japan (Tokyo) regions. | |
NLB introduces subscription resource plans | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) resource plans are a subscription option that, after activation, automatically offsets the Load Balancer Capacity Unit (LCU) and instance fees for NLB. NLB resource plans offer greater discounts than the pay-as-you-go model. You can also set a flexible activation time for the NLB resource plan, which makes them ideal for enterprises with fixed budgets. | |
GWLB is in public preview | New | Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) is available in public preview. GWLB is a Layer 3 load balancer that uses an IP listener to distribute traffic from all ports to network virtual appliances in a backend server group. During the public preview, you can use the GWLB service for free. |
September 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB now supports UDP health checks | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports port-based and custom UDP health checks.
| |
Dual-stack NLB instances are now available in a new region | Update | Dual-stack Network Load Balancer (NLB) instances are now available in the UK (London) region. | |
One-click WAF protection for ALB | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now lets you enable Web Application Firewall (WAF) with a single click. Based on your business needs, you can quickly enable or disable WAF protection for an ALB instance. This action upgrades your instance to the WAF-enabled edition and simplifies security management. During this process, you can review detailed billing information to understand all associated costs. | |
ALB availability zone update | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now available in availability zone L of the China (Beijing) region. |
August 2024
Feature | Change type | Description | References |
Retain an EIP when releasing an internet-facing CLB instance | New | When you release an internet-facing CLB instance, you can retain its public IP address by converting it to an EIP. You can then associate the retained EIP with other instances in the same region, such as an ALB or another CLB instance. This lets you migrate instances without changing the public IP address. | |
Enhanced Throttle Traffic action for ALB listener forwarding rules | Update | You can now use the Throttle Traffic action in an ALB listener forwarding rule with the Forward To, Return Fixed Responses, and Redirect actions. |
July 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Guide to manually migrating CLB layer 4 listeners to NLB | New | Compared to Classic Load Balancer (CLB), Network Load Balancer (NLB) offers better layer 4 load balancing performance. It can handle high volumes of concurrent connections and offers features such as SSL offloading for TCP traffic and connection throttling. As your business grows and demands more features, higher performance, stability, and elasticity, you can manually migrate traffic from a CLB layer 4 listener to an NLB instance to handle high-concurrency workloads. |
June 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB integration with Global Accelerator for application acceleration | New | ALB integrates with Global Accelerator (GA). If services on your ALB instances are affected by poor public network performance, you can use GA to accelerate application access and improve the end-user experience. GA routes client requests to the nearest Alibaba Cloud access point and delivers them to your application servers over Alibaba Cloud's accelerated network. | |
Security group support for ALB | New | You can add ALB instances to basic and advanced security groups. A security group provides stateful inspection and packet filtering. By adding an ALB instance to a security group, you can enhance the security of the ALB instance. |
May 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB Ingress now allows creating or using existing ALB instances from the ACK console | New | You can now create or select an existing ALB instance directly from the Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) console when you create a cluster or install the ALB Ingress controller, eliminating the need to use YAML. | |
ALB Ingress supports creating custom forwarding rules in the ACK console | New | You can create custom forwarding rules for an ALB instance in the ACK console to gain more granular control over your traffic. |
April 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB instances now support multiple port range listeners | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) overcomes the previous limitation of allowing only one port range listener to be configured per instance. If your services require traffic distribution across multiple port ranges, you can configure multiple port range listeners on a single NLB instance. This approach significantly reduces the number of required NLB instances, which lowers costs and simplifies O&M management. | |
ALB now supports slow start | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports slow start for server groups. When enabled, ALB gradually increases the number of requests sent to a newly added backend server. This feature helps prevent a backend server from being overwhelmed by a sudden traffic surge, making it ideal for scenarios such as resource provisioning and cache warming. | |
ALB now supports connection draining | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports connection draining for server groups. To prevent service interruptions caused by removing a backend server or a health check failure, you can enable connection draining. This feature allows in-flight requests to complete within a specified timeout period, ensuring a graceful shutdown of services. |
March 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB supports tracing | New | Alibaba Cloud Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports tracing. This feature provides end-to-end tracing data for ALB requests, including the request source, path, and response times, helping you quickly identify and resolve service issues. | |
NLB supports fine-grained monitoring | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now integrates with Simple Log Service (SLS) to provide fine-grained monitoring. You can view metrics from layer 4 listeners, such as per-second traffic, the number of new connections, and the maximum number of connections, enabling more precise service monitoring and faster troubleshooting. |
February 2024
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Dual-stack NLB instances now available in new regions | Update | Dual-stack Network Load Balancer (NLB) instances are now available in the following regions: China (Ulanqab), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), Japan (Tokyo), South Korea (Seoul), and US (Silicon Valley). | |
NLB now supports quota alerts | New | You can now create quota alerts for Network Load Balancer (NLB) to monitor quota usage. By setting thresholds for used or remaining quotas, you can receive notifications and request quota increases to prevent business disruptions. | |
NLB now supports the weighted least connections scheduling algorithm | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports the weighted least connections scheduling algorithm for server groups. |
January 2024
Feature | Type | Description | Reference |
NLB now available in new regions | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now available in the China (Heyuan) and SAU (Riyadh - Partner Region) regions. | |
ALB now available in a new region | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now available in the China (Heyuan) region. |
December 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB zone update | Update | Zone C is now available in the China (Shenzhen) region. | |
Zone-level monitoring for ALB | Update | ALB supports zone-level monitoring. You can view and analyze metrics for each zone (at the VIP level) of an ALB instance in fixed IP mode. |
November 2023
Feature | Type | Description | Related links |
NLB available in new regions | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now available in the China (Ulanqab), Thailand (Bangkok), and Philippines (Manila) regions. | |
NLB supports zone-level monitoring | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports zone-level monitoring. You can view and analyze metrics for each zone at the virtual IP address (VIP) level. | |
ALB supports viewing quota usage and creating quota alerts | New | You can now view your Application Load Balancer (ALB) quota usage. For certain quota items, you can also create an alert by setting a threshold for either used or remaining quota. | |
Specify a private IP address for an ALB instance using OpenAPI Explorer | New | You can now use OpenAPI Explorer to specify a private IP address when you create an Internet-facing or internal-facing Application Load Balancer (ALB) instance. For each VSwitch associated with the instance, you can assign an IPv4 address from its CIDR block. | Specify a private IP address for an ALB instance using OpenAPI Explorer |
September 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB supports cross-zone disaster recovery drills and VIP probing | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports simulating scenarios such as ALB multi-availability zone disaster recovery by using availability zone DNS removal and DNS recovery. In addition, when a zone is enabled, ALB activates availability probing for the VIP in that zone. | |
Quick migration of layer 7 listeners from CLB to ALB | New | ALB offers more powerful layer 7 load balancing and advanced routing features than CLB. To accelerate your business migration, you can now use a one-click tool to migrate layer 7 listeners from CLB to ALB. |
July 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB is now available in new regions | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports the Indonesia (Jakarta) region. | |
NLB now supports cross-zone disaster recovery drills and VIP probing | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports simulating scenarios such as NLB multi-availability zone disaster recovery by using availability zone DNS removal and DNS recovery. When an availability zone is enabled, you can also probe the availability of its VIPs. | |
NLB now supports additional certificates | New | The TCP/SSL listener of Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports additional certificates to meet the requirements for use cases such as multi-domain access or attaching multiple server certificates. | |
ALB forwarding rules now support client IP-based QPS throttling | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports QPS throttling based on client source IP addresses, which provides more flexible traffic control. This feature allows you to implement fine-grained QPS throttling by setting limits for individual client source IP addresses. | |
ALB now supports HTTP/3 | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports HTTP/3, the next-generation web standard protocol built on the iQUIC protocol. HTTP/3 shortens page load times, reduces video re-buffering, and increases throughput for high-latency connections to provide ultra-low latency network performance for internet services. | |
ALB now supports HTTPS health checks | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports HTTPS health checks. When an end-to-end HTTPS encryption protocol is used, ALB can more accurately detect the actual status of backend services to enhance business security. |
June 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB is now available in new regions | update | network load balancer (NLB) is available in South Korea (Seoul) and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur). |
May 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB now available in new regions | Update | NLB is now available in the China (Guangzhou), Japan (Tokyo), US (Virginia), and US (Silicon Valley) regions. | |
NLB now supports advanced security groups | Update | An advanced security group supports more private IP addresses. You can now add an NLB instance to an advanced security group. This is ideal for scenarios that require high security group capacity. | |
ALB integrates with Managed Service for Prometheus | New | ALB now integrates with Managed Service for Prometheus. You can use the metrics, dashboards, and alerts from Managed Service for Prometheus to monitor your ALB instances. |
April 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
View NLB operation logs | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now integrated with ActionTrail. You can query NLB events from multiple regions for the last 90 days in the load balancer console. | |
Fine-grained Monitoring for ALB | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) access logs now support metrics with per-second granularity. This fine-grained monitoring helps you identify transient anomalies. | |
Advanced Features for ALB Ingress | Update |
|
March 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB now supports EIPs protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports association with Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium EIPs, enabling secure public network access. You can associate an Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium EIP with an NLB instance when you create the instance or change its network type. Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium EIPs provide Tbps-level DDoS protection, making them ideal for high-security, latency-sensitive scenarios. | |
ALB now supports instance diagnostics | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now integrates with Network Intelligence Service (NIS) to offer instance diagnostics. This feature helps you diagnose instance configuration and health, generate diagnostic reports, and obtain recommended solutions for any detected issues. |
February 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Guide for manually migrating CLB layer 7 listeners to ALB | New | Compared to CLB, ALB features powerful Layer 7 load balancing capabilities and rich advanced routing features. A new guide on manually migrating Layer 7 listeners from CLB to ALB is now available to help you migrate your services from CLB Layer 7 listeners to ALB. | |
ALB supports EIPs protected by Anti-DDoS (Enhanced) | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports EIPs protected by Anti-DDoS (Enhanced). You can associate these EIPs with an ALB instance to provide public internet access and DDoS protection. You can create this association when you create an ALB instance or change its network type. An EIP protected by Anti-DDoS (Enhanced) provides terabit-scale DDoS protection and is ideal for latency-sensitive applications that require a high level of security. | |
ALB Ingress integration updates | Update |
| |
NLB is integrated with Quota Center | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now integrates with Quota Center. You can use Quota Center to view your NLB quotas and request quota increases. |
January 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
SLB console troubleshooting | New | The troubleshooting feature for Server Load Balancer (SLB) helps you diagnose and resolve instance status issues, access problems, and health check failures. |
December 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB now supports security groups | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports security groups. You can add a security group to an NLB instance to allow or deny access to the public network or private network for the NLB instance. | |
NLB now supports mutual authentication for TCPSSL listeners | Update | You can now enable mutual authentication for Network Load Balancer (NLB) TCPSSL listeners. | |
ALB is now integrated with Quota Center | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now integrated with Quota Center. You can use Quota Center to view and request increases to general and privilege quotas for ALB. |
November 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB is now generally available | New | The public preview and limited-time free promotion for Network Load Balancer (NLB) have ended. NLB is now generally available and subject to billing. | |
NLB now supports multi-port listening | Update | Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports multi-port listening. After this feature is enabled, NLB can listen on all ports within the listener port range. | |
NLB now supports Terraform | Update | You can now use Terraform to create and manage NLB instances. | |
NLB now supports Anycast EIPs | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports binding Anycast EIPs to provide services over the public network. You can use the change network type feature to bind an Anycast EIP to an NLB instance. | |
Application Load Balancer (ALB) Ingress is now open source on GitHub | Update | ALB Ingress provides powerful traffic management for Ingresses based on Alibaba Cloud Application Load Balancer (ALB). It is compatible with Nginx Ingress and supports complex business routing, automatic certificate discovery, and HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC protocols. ALB Ingress is ideal for cloud-native applications in self-managed Kubernetes clusters on ECS that require high elasticity and large-scale Layer 7 traffic processing. |
October 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB now supports Anycast EIPs | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports Anycast EIPs for internet-facing services. You can associate an Anycast EIP with an ALB instance by changing its network type. | |
Expanded region support for ALB WAF-enabled edition | Update | The WAF-enabled edition of ALB is now available in more regions. We've also streamlined the process for enabling and managing WAF protection for your ALB instances. | |
ALB now supports traffic mirroring to IP-based server groups | Update | In Application Load Balancer (ALB), the traffic mirroring action for listener forwarding rules now supports IP-based server groups. | |
NLB now supports Proxy Protocol to retrieve client IP addresses | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports Proxy Protocol to pass client IP addresses to backend servers. | |
NLB now supports on-premises servers as backends | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) server groups support the configuration of IP-based backend servers. You can use a combination of products, such as NLB and CEN transit routers, to enable NLB to forward requests to on-premises servers. | Add on-premises servers to an NLB instance within the same region |
September 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB supports IPv6 load balancing | New feature | Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports IPv6 load balancing. You can create a dual-stack ALB instance and configure listeners and server groups to forward traffic from IPv6 clients to your IPv4 and IPv6 backend services. |
August 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
New advanced features for ALB Ingress | Update | ALB Ingress now supports cross-origin resource sharing (CORS), persistent TCP connections, and QPS throttling. |
July 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB public preview | New | Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now in public preview. NLB is a next-generation Layer 4 load balancer from Alibaba Cloud, designed for the Internet of Everything (IoE). The NLB service is free of charge during the public preview. | |
ALB: Consistent hashing based on URL parameters | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports consistent hashing based on URL parameters. This routes requests with the same URL parameters to the same backend server. | |
ALB: CORS support for forwarding rules | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports configuring CORS as a forwarding action in listener forwarding rules. A cross-origin request is a request for a resource from a different domain, protocol, or port than the current page. | |
ALB: Regex support for domain and path conditions in forwarding rules | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) listeners support forwarding rules based on domain names or paths. You can now use regular expressions for domain name and path conditions, path rewrites, and redirects. |
June 2022
Feature | Type | Description | Related documentation |
ALB supports gRPC | New | You can use Application Load Balancer (ALB) to load-balance gRPC services. Currently, ALB supports only TLS termination for gRPC, where traffic is encrypted at the frontend and transmitted to backend servers in plaintext. To route gRPC requests, you must configure a gRPC server group, create an HTTPS listener with HTTP/2 enabled, and configure a gRPC health check. The ALB instance then forwards client requests to the backend gRPC server group. | |
ALB now offers the WAF Enhanced Edition | Update | Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now available in a WAF Enhanced Edition, which adds WAF security protection to the Standard Edition. When you select this edition, WAF 3.0 automatically protects web traffic to the listeners on your ALB instance. | |
ALB Ingress supports WAF protection | New | Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides all-in-one security for your websites and applications. It prevents data breaches, HTTP flood attacks, webshells, and web page tampering. It also provides virtual patches. When you enable WAF protection for an ALB Ingress, WAF protects traffic to the listeners on the ALB instance. | None |
March 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
ALB now supports Function Compute (FC) as a backend service | New | ALB now supports using Function Compute (FC) as a backend service. You can configure ALB to forward requests to your functions. |
February 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
gRPC support for ALB Ingress | New | ALB Ingress now supports gRPC. To use this feature, add the | |
ALB Ingress support for Knative on ASK | New | Knative is an open-source serverless application framework built on Kubernetes that helps you deploy and manage modern serverless workloads. ALB is a highly elastic Layer 7 load balancing service for protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC, capable of handling large-scale traffic. ASK now supports the deployment of an ALB Ingress based on Knative. |
January 2022
Feature | Type | Description | Related documentation |
ALB supports adding servers across regions and VPCs. | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) server groups support IP-based backend servers. You can configure ALB and CEN transit routers to forward requests to servers in other regions. | Add a backend server from a VPC in another region to an ALB instance |
Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports adding on-premises servers. | New | Application Load Balancer (ALB) server groups support IP-based backend servers. By combining products such as ALB and CEN Transit Router, you can forward requests from ALB to on-premises servers. | Add an on-premises server in the same region to an ALB instance |
November 2021
Feature | Description | References |
ALB Ingress management in the ACK console | You can create ALB Ingress resources from the routing management page in the ACK console. A configuration wizard guides you through creating Ingress rules that use an ALB instance for Layer 7 forwarding. You can also add multiple configurations for the ALB instance. | |
Increased SLA for multi-availability zone Application Load Balancer (ALB) instances | The service availability SLA for multi-availability zone Application Load Balancer (ALB) instances is now 99.995%, up from 99.95%. |
October 2021
Feature | Description | References |
ALB Ingress | ALB Ingress provides advanced Ingress traffic management by using Alibaba Cloud ALB. Compatible with NGINX Ingress, it supports traffic routing, automatic certificate discovery, and the HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC protocols. This feature is ideal for cloud-native applications in ACK and ASK environments that handle high-volume Layer 7 traffic and require high elasticity. |
September 2021
Feature | Description | References |
ALB resource plans | ALB resource plans are a subscription option that offers a significant discount over the pay-as-you-go model. After a resource plan is purchased and takes effect, it automatically offsets the LCU and instance fees for your ALB usage. You can also set an activation time for the resource plan, making it ideal for enterprises with fixed budgets. |
August 2021
Feature | Description | Related documents |
ALB now supports Internet Shared Bandwidth | When you create an ALB instance, you can select an existing EIP and add it to an Internet Shared Bandwidth instance. After the EIP is added to the Internet Shared Bandwidth instance, you can reuse its bandwidth, reducing your public bandwidth costs. |
July 2021
Feature | Description | Related documentation |
CLB supports using Proxy Protocol to retrieve client IP addresses | A CLB layer 4 listener supports Proxy Protocol, which adds a header containing the original connection information (such as the source IP address, destination IP address, source port, and destination port) to the TCP data without discarding or overwriting any original data. |
March 2021
Feature | Description | References |
Mutual authentication for ALB | You can now enable mutual authentication for ALB HTTPS listeners. | |
Outbound forwarding rules for ALB | ALB forwarding rules apply to both inbound and outbound traffic. You can now configure outbound forwarding rules. |
January 2021
Feature | Description | References |
Optimized monitoring for CLB | CLB has collaborated with CloudMonitor to optimize monitoring features. The health check data for a default listener will no longer include the health check data from forwarding rules. |
October 2020
Feature | Description | Related documentation |
ALB public preview | ALB is in public preview. You can use it for free during the preview. |
July 2019
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Health checks | TCP UDP HTTP HTTPS | |
Load balancer overview | TCP UDP HTTP HTTPS | - |
June 2019
Feature | Supported listener | References |
Server Load Balancer instances now support same-port TCP and UDP listeners in more regions. | TCP UDP | |
You can now add backend servers by using the secondary IP addresses of ECS elastic network interfaces. | UDP TCP HTTP HTTPS |
May 2019
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
TCP and UDP listeners can now share the same port on a single SLB instance. | UDP TCP | |
HTTPS listeners now support elliptic curve keys. | HTTPS | |
HTTPS listeners now support TLS 1.3. | HTTPS | |
Health checks for Layer 7 listeners now support the GET method. | HTTPS HTTP |
April 2019
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Support for querying resource availability in zones via API. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
IPv6 support | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
January 2019
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Idle instance management | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
November 2018
Feature | Supported listener | References |
Listener redirection | HTTP |
October 2018
Feature | Supported listener | References |
Adding ENIs of ECS instances as backend servers in the console | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
September 2018
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Support for certificates from SSL Certificates Service | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
IPv6 support | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
Advanced settings for forwarding rules, including custom scheduling algorithms, session persistence, and health checks | HTTP HTTPS |
August 2018
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Batch updates to backend server ports and weights | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
July 2018
Feature | Listener type | Documentation |
Quota query (API) | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | - |
New console on the Alibaba Cloud China site | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
Consistent hashing algorithm, QUIC protocol, and UDP session persistence for Layer 4 listeners | UDP TCP |
June 2018
Feature | Supported listeners | Related documentation |
TLS version customization | HTTPS | |
IPv6 support | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
May 2018
Feature | Supported listener | References |
HTTP/2 support | HTTPS | |
Multiple certificate support (SNI) | HTTPS | |
Access control with blacklist and whitelist support | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
Access log | HTTP HTTPS | |
ECS elastic network interfaces as backend servers (OpenAPI) | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
April 2018
Feature | Supported listeners | Documentation |
Custom timeout for a Layer 7 listener | HTTP HTTPS |
February 2018
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
WS/WSS | HTTP HTTPS | |
HTTP/2 | HTTPS |
November 2017
Feature | Supported listeners | Documentation |
View instance-level Alibaba Cloud Security thresholds | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
Performance-guaranteed instances | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
August 2017
Feature | Supported listener | References |
Support for layer 7 monitoring metrics, such as QPS. | HTTP HTTPS | |
Layer 4 listeners support custom timeout periods. | TCP | |
Listeners on a Server Load Balancer (SLB) instance can share bandwidth. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
February 2017
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Primary/secondary server groups | UDP TCP |
November 2016
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Custom HTTP headers | HTTP HTTPS |
March 2016
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
Domain name and path forwarding | HTTP HTTPS |
December 2015
Parameter | Supported listeners | Documentation |
Multi-AZ deployment | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
July 2015
Feature | Supported listener | References |
HTTP health checks for TCP listeners | TCP |
April 2015
Feature | Supported listeners | References |
VPC Support | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
January 2015
Feature | Listener | Documentation |
HTTPS support | HTTPS |
February 2014
Feature name | Supported listeners | Related documentation |
Official launch of SLB. | HTTP TCP |