Server Load Balancer:Release notes

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

New regions available for ALB

Update

• Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now available in the UAE (Dubai) region.

• The WAF-enabled ALB feature is now available in the South Korea (Seoul) and Mexico regions.

Regions and zones that support ALB

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

Increased configuration range for ALB connection timeout

Update

The configurable range for the request timeout and idle timeout of Application Load Balancer (ALB) listeners is increased to 1 to 600 seconds. To request a larger range, you can submit an application in Quota Center.

• Listener quotas

• HTTP and HTTPS listeners

• Add an HTTPS listener

• Add a QUIC listener

Gateway Load Balancer is commercially available

Update

The public preview and free trial of Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) have ended. GWLB is now commercially available and billable.

• Commercial release of GWLB and GWLBe

• GWLB billing overview

New zone available for NLB

Update

Zone B is added to the UAE (Dubai) region.

Regions and zones that support NLB

New region available for TCP/SSL listeners of NLB

Update

TCP/SSL listeners for Network Load Balancer (NLB) are now available in the UAE (Dubai) region.

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

GWLB supports TCP connection idle timeout configuration

Update

Customize the TCP connection idle timeout for IP listeners of Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) to flexibly adjust the duration of persistent connections when no data is transmitted. This feature is available only when the scheduling algorithm of the associated server group is set to 5-tuple hashing.

• Connection idle timeout

• Add and manage IP listeners

GWLB supports LCU estimator

New

Use the GWLB LCU estimator to estimate your LCU consumption.

• GWLB LCU estimator

• GWLB billing rules

New zones available for ALB

Update

Zone B is added to the South Korea (Seoul) region, Zone C is added to the Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) region, and Zone B is added to the Thailand (Bangkok) region.

Regions and zones that support ALB

New zones available for NLB

Update

Zone B is added to the China (Hangzhou) region, Zone A is added to the Mexico region, Zone B is added to the Thailand (Bangkok) region, Zone B is added to the South Korea (Seoul) region, and Zone C is added to the Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) region.

Regions and zones that support NLB

New region available for NLB

Update

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now available in the UAE (Dubai) region.

New cipher suites added to NLB TLS security policies

Update

The ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 and ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 cipher suites are added to the TLS security policies of NLB. These cipher suites can be used only in custom policies.

TLS security policies

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

New zone available for GWLB

Update

Zone A is added to the Japan (Tokyo) region.

Regions and zones that support GWLB

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB supports instance cloning

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports instance cloning. You can use this feature to quickly create an instance that is identical or similar to a source instance. This is useful for scenarios such as rapid environment deployment, disaster recovery and backup, and configuration migration. Instance cloning improves business deployment efficiency and continuity.

• Instance cloning

• Use ALB instance cloning to quickly deploy multiple environments

New regions available for dual-stack ALB

Update

Dual-stack ALB is now available in the Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), South Korea (Seoul), Philippines (Manila), and Thailand (Bangkok) regions.

Regions that support dual-stack ALB

New zones available for ALB

Update

Zone C is added to the China (Ulanqab) region and Zone B is added to the China (Hangzhou) region.

Regions and zones that support ALB

New cipher suites added to ALB TLS security policies

Update

The ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 and ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 cipher suites are added to the TLS security policies of ALB. These suites provide forward secrecy and high-performance encryption to meet the requirements of high-security and low-latency scenarios, such as finance and mobile applications. These cipher suites can be used only in custom policies.

TLS security policies

NLB supports instance diagnosis

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is integrated with Network Intelligence Service (NIS) to provide an instance diagnosis feature. Use instance diagnosis to check the configuration and status of your instances. The feature provides diagnostic results and solutions to fix exceptions.

NLB instance diagnosis

CLB supports instance diagnosis

New

Classic Load Balancer (CLB) is integrated with Network Intelligence Service (NIS) to provide an instance diagnosis feature. Use instance diagnosis to check the configuration and status of your instances. The feature provides diagnostic results and solutions to fix exceptions.

CLB instance diagnosis

NLB health checks support HTTP version selection

Update

NLB health checks support HTTP/1.0 (default) and HTTP/1.1.

NLB server groups

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB health checks support resource groups

Update

Use resource groups to manage ALB health checks.

Health checks

ALB mutual authentication supports custom CA certificates

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports mutual authentication with self-signed CA certificates. You can upload a self-signed root CA certificate or a self-signed intermediate CA certificate to Certificate Management Service. ALB then retrieves and uses the certificate.

• Add an HTTPS listener

• Manage certificates

• Deploy an HTTPS service that uses mutual authentication on an ALB instance

New region available for ALB

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now available in the Mexico region.

• Regions and zones that support ALB

• ALB resource plans

GWLB supports rebalancing

New

Enable the rebalancing feature for a server group. If a backend server becomes unavailable, Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) reroutes existing traffic to other available servers.

Rebalancing

NLB supports elastic local IPs

Update

When client IP persistence is disabled for a Network Load Balancer (NLB) server group, each NLB and backend server (or IP) combination in a zone supports up to 60,000 concurrent connections. If this limit is exceeded, a new local IP is automatically created to prevent port allocation failures.

Limits

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB supports Function Compute 3.0

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports adding Function Compute 3.0 as a backend service.

• Add backend servers of the Function Compute type

• Add Function Compute as a backend service for an ALB instance

NLB new region available

Update

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now available in the Mexico region.

Regions and zones that support NLB

NLB resource plans available in a new region

Update

Network Load Balancer (NLB) resource plans are now available in the Mexico region.

NLB resource plans

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB instance upgrade

Update

Upgraded Application Load Balancer (ALB) instances no longer differentiate between IP modes. They use automatic VIP elasticity to achieve a performance of 1 million queries per second (QPS) for a single instance. Upgraded ALB instances provide the following additional features:

• IPv6 addresses can be added to IP-type server groups, enabling them to provide both IPv4 and IPv6 backend services.

• QUIC listeners support the X-Forwarded-For header to retain the IP address of the original client that sends a request.

• Both security groups and access control lists (ACLs) can be used to filter incoming requests.

• Within the same region, SLB instances can be added to IP-type server groups, working as backend servers for ALB instances.

• Announcement on the upgrade of Application Load Balancer (ALB) instances

• Instance performance metrics

CLB new region available

Update

Classic Load Balancer (CLB) is now available in the Mexico region.

Regions that support CLB

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB supports optimization of additional HTTP header fields

Update

• Application Load Balancer (ALB) enables the X-Forwarded-For header by default. You can disable this feature. When the X-Forwarded-For header is enabled, ALB can add or remove the X-Forwarded-For header from a request before sending the request to a backend server. When the X-Forwarded-For header is disabled, ALB does not modify the X-Forwarded-For header in a request before sending the request to a backend server.

• ALB supports the X-Forwarded-Host header, which lets you obtain the domain name used by the client to access the SLB instance.

• HTTP and HTTPS listeners

• Add an HTTPS listener

• Add a QUIC listener

• HTTP header fields

CLB supports scheduled O&M events

New

Scheduled operations and maintenance (O&M) events for Classic Load Balancer (CLB) are notifications sent by Alibaba Cloud before system updates, maintenance, or network migrations that may affect your SLB instances.

You can manually adjust the O&M schedule and create response plans based on the event's impact to minimize business disruptions.

Scheduled O&M events

CLB billing item adjustment

Update

[Billing item renamed] The original instance fee is renamed to "public IP retention fee". The unit price remains unchanged. This fee is charged only for Internet-facing instances.

[New billing item] A new instance fee is introduced for all Internet-facing and internal-facing CLB instances created after 00:00:00 on December 1, 2024.

• Billing overview

• Pay-as-you-go

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB supports disabling cross-zone load balancing

New

When cross-zone 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 region and zone. By disabling cross-zone load balancing, you can reduce data transmission latency across zones and improve access speed.

• Create and manage a server group

• Disable cross-zone load balancing for an ALB instance to reduce request latency

ALB supports multi-cluster gateways for ACK One

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports multi-cluster attachment through ACK One. This helps you quickly build zone-disaster recovery and geo-disaster recovery systems for hybrid cloud and multi-cluster applications, enabling efficient traffic management and administration.

• Overview of ALB multi-cluster gateways

• Implement zone-disaster recovery using an ACK One ALB multi-cluster gateway

• Implement hybrid disaster recovery using an ACK One ALB multi-cluster gateway

Nginx Ingress supports automatic migration to ALB Ingress

New

When you migrate from Nginx Ingress to ALB Ingress, the migration tool provided by ACK automatically converts Nginx Ingress configurations to ALB Ingress configurations. This eliminates the need for manual conversion, making the migration faster and more secure.

Migrate from a self-managed Nginx Ingress to an ALB Ingress

Domain name upgrade for ALB and NLB

Update

Starting from 00:00:00 on November 15, 2024 (UTC+8), new ALB and NLB instances use upgraded domain names by default. Alibaba Cloud will no longer allow you to directly access instances using the default domain names provided by the platform.

Announcement on the upgrade of SLB domain names

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB dual-stack available in new regions

Update

Dual-stack Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now available in the UK (London), US (Silicon Valley), and Japan (Tokyo) regions.

Regions that support dual-stack ALB

NLB introduces resource plans (subscription)

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) resource plans are NLB subscription packages. After a resource plan takes effect, it automatically deducts the LCU fees and instance fees incurred by your NLB instances.

Compared with the pay-as-you-go billing method, NLB resource plans offer greater discounts. You can also flexibly set the effective period of an NLB resource plan to suit your business needs, making them ideal for enterprises with fixed budgets.

• Billing overview

• NLB resource plans

• Purchase an NLB resource plan

• Set alerts for a resource plan

GWLB is in public preview

New

Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) is in public preview. GWLB is a Layer 3 load balancer. You can use an IP listener to distribute traffic from all ports to network virtual appliances in a backend server group. You can use the GWLB service for free during the public preview.

• What is Gateway Load Balancer?

• Use GWLB to quickly implement security inspection for IPv4 traffic

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

NLB supports UDP health checks

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports port and custom UDP health checks.

• Port health check: NLB sends ICMP Request and UDP probe packets to a backend server. If the backend server returns an ICMP Response message within the timeout period and no Port XX Unreachable error is reported, the health check is successful. Otherwise, the health check fails.

• Custom health check: NLB sends a UDP probe packet with specified characters to a backend server. If a response that matches the expectation is received within the timeout period, the health check is successful. Otherwise, the health check fails.

• NLB server groups

• NLB health checks

• Troubleshoot NLB health check exceptions

NLB dual-stack available in a new region

Update

Dual-stack Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now available in the UK (London) region.

Regions that support dual-stack NLB

Enable WAF protection for ALB with one click

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports enabling Web Application Protection with a single click. You can quickly enable or disable WAF protection for an ALB instance as needed. After you enable WAF protection, the ALB instance is upgraded to the WAF-enabled edition to provide security protection and simplify operations. During the process, you can view detailed billing information to ensure you fully understand the associated fees.

Enable WAF protection for an ALB instance

ALB new zone available

Update

Zone L is added to the China (Beijing) region.

Regions and zones that support ALB

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

Retain an EIP when releasing an Internet-facing CLB instance

New

When you release an Internet-facing CLB instance, you can choose to convert its public IP address to an EIP and retain it. The retained EIP can be associated with other instances in the same region, such as an ALB instance or another CLB instance. This lets you keep the same public IP address when migrating instances.

Create and manage a CLB instance

Optimization of the throttling feature in ALB listener forwarding rules

Update

The throttling action in the forwarding rules of an Application Load Balancer (ALB) listener can be used with the Forward to, Return Fixed Response, and Redirect actions.

Configure listener forwarding rules

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

Manual migration guide from CLB Layer 4 listeners to NLB

New

Compared with Classic Load Balancer (CLB), Network Load Balancer (NLB) provides high-performance Layer 4 load balancing that can handle a massive number of concurrent connections. NLB also supports features such as TCP/SSL offloading and connection throttling. If your business is growing and you have higher requirements for features, performance, stability, and elasticity, you can manually migrate traffic from CLB Layer 4 listeners to NLB instances to handle high-concurrency workloads.

Manual migration guide from CLB Layer 4 listeners to NLB

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

Integrate ALB with GA for application acceleration with one click

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports integration with Global Accelerator (GA). If the end-user experience of your ALB-deployed services is affected by poor Internet quality, you can use GA for application acceleration. GA allows end-user access requests to connect to the nearest Alibaba Cloud point of presence and reach the application servers through Alibaba Cloud's accelerated internal network.

Use GA integration to quickly accelerate applications for an ALB instance

ALB supports security groups

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports basic and advanced security groups. A security group provides stateful inspection and packet filtering. You can add a security group to an ALB instance to improve the ALB instance's security.

• Add an ALB instance to a security group

• Configure a security group for an ALB instance to implement access control based on listeners or ports

• Configure a security group for an ALB instance to implement a blacklist and whitelist policy

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB Ingress supports creating and using existing ALB instances in the ACK console

New

When you create a cluster or install the ALB Ingress Controller component in the ACK console, you can create and use an existing ALB instance at the same time, without needing to create resources using YAML.

• ALB Ingress management

• Create and use an ALB Ingress to expose services

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 for more flexible control.

• ALB Ingress feature guide

• Customize forwarding rules for an ALB Ingress

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

An NLB instance supports multiple port range listeners

Update

Network Load Balancer (NLB) breaks the previous limit of configuring only one port range listener per instance. When your business needs to distribute traffic across multiple port ranges, you can configure multiple port range listeners within a single NLB instance. This significantly reduces the number of NLB instances required compared to previous solutions, lowering costs and simplifying O&M.

• Add a TCP listener

• Add a UDP listener

• Add a TCP/SSL listener

ALB supports slow start

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports enabling the slow start feature for server groups. After slow start is enabled, ALB can gradually increase requests to newly added backend servers in the server group. This alleviates the pressure of sudden traffic surges on backend servers during resource preparation and cache prefetching.

• Create and manage a server group

• Achieve graceful service publishing with ALB slow start

ALB supports connection draining

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports enabling the connection draining feature for server groups. To prevent service interruptions caused by removing a backend server or a health check exception, you can use the connection draining feature of ALB. This allows existing connections to be processed normally for a certain period, ensuring a smooth service shutdown.

• Create and manage a server group

• Achieve smooth service shutdown with ALB connection draining

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB supports Tracing Analysis

New

Alibaba Cloud Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports Tracing Analysis. This feature provides complete ALB request tracing data, including the source of requests, the nodes they pass through, and response times. This helps you quickly locate and resolve business issues.

• Manage Tracing Analysis

• Implement end-to-end business analysis with ALB Tracing Analysis

NLB supports fine-grained monitoring

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB), in conjunction with Simple Log Service (SLS), introduces fine-grained monitoring. You can view second-level traffic, new connections, maximum connections, and other information for NLB through the monitoring metrics of Layer 4 listeners. This enables more detailed service monitoring and issue locating.

Fine-grained monitoring for NLB

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

NLB new region available

Update

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now available in the South Korea (Seoul) and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) regions.

Regions and zones that support NLB

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

NLB new region available

Update

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is now available in the China (Guangzhou), Japan (Tokyo), US (Virginia), and US (Silicon Valley) regions.

Regions and zones that support NLB

NLB supports advanced security groups

Update

Advanced security groups can accommodate a larger number of private IP addresses. Network Load Balancer (NLB) now supports being added to advanced security groups, meeting the needs of scenarios with high capacity requirements for security groups.

• Add an NLB instance to a security group

• Configure a security group for an NLB instance to implement access control based on listeners or ports

• Configure an NLB security group to implement a blacklist and whitelist policy

ALB supports Prometheus monitoring

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) is now integrated with Alibaba Cloud Prometheus. You can use the metrics, dashboards, and alerts provided by Prometheus to view ALB monitoring data.

Integrate an ALB instance with Prometheus

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

NLB supports viewing operation logs

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is integrated with ActionTrail. You can query NLB events from the last 90 days and beyond in the SLB console across multiple regions.

NLB operation logs

ALB supports second-level monitoring

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) access logs support viewing second-level monitoring metrics. This displays monitoring information at a second-level granularity, making it easier to detect transient jitter and exceptions.

View access logs

ALB Ingress advanced features update

Update

• ALB Ingress supports custom forwarding rules.

• ALB Ingress supports hybrid attachment of Kubernetes and ECS, along with cross-region and on-premises IDC resource attachment through combined configurations with products like Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) and Transit Router.

• Advanced features

• Customize forwarding rules for an ALB Ingress

• Use an ALB Ingress to implement hybrid, cross-region, and on-premises IDC attachment

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

NLB supports binding an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced)

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports binding an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced), which provides Internet access and security protection. You can bind an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced) to an NLB instance when you create the instance or change its network type.

An EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced) provides Tbps-level professional DDoS mitigation capabilities, suitable for scenarios with high security requirements and low latency sensitivity.

• Enable Internet access for an NLB instance using an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced)

• Change the network type of an NLB instance

ALB supports instance diagnosis

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) is integrated with Network Intelligence Service (NIS) to provide an instance diagnosis feature. Use instance diagnosis to check the configuration and status of your instances. The feature provides diagnostic results and solutions to fix exceptions.

ALB instance diagnosis

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

Manual migration guide from CLB Layer 7 listeners to ALB

New

Compared to Classic Load Balancer (CLB), Application Load Balancer (ALB) offers powerful Layer 7 load balancing capabilities and rich advanced routing features. A new guide for manually migrating from CLB Layer 7 listeners to ALB is available to help you migrate your CLB Layer 7 services to ALB.

Manual migration guide from CLB Layer 7 listeners to ALB

ALB supports binding an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced)

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports binding an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced), which provides Internet access and security protection. You can bind an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced) to an ALB instance when you create the instance or change its network type.

An EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced) provides Tbps-level professional DDoS mitigation capabilities, suitable for scenarios with high security requirements and low latency sensitivity.

• Enable Internet access for an ALB instance using an EIP with Anti-DDoS (Enhanced)

• Change the network type of an ALB instance

• What types of EIPs can be bound to an ALB instance?

ALB Ingress ecosystem integration update

Update

• Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) supports integration with Application Load Balancer (ALB) through an Ingress to enable application auto scaling based on QPS data.

• You can access services through ALB in an ACK or ACK Serverless cluster with the Knative component installed.

• You can use ALB in a self-managed Kubernetes cluster on the cloud through an Ingress.

• ALB Ingress ecosystem integration

• Use HPA to implement application auto scaling based on QPS data

• Guide to using ALB Ingress in a self-managed Kubernetes cluster

NLB is integrated with Quota Center

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is integrated with Quota Center, allowing you to self-manage and view NLB general quotas in Quota Center.

• NLB quotas

• Manage NLB quotas

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

SLB console adds a self-service troubleshooting feature

New

The self-service troubleshooting feature of Alibaba Cloud Server Load Balancer (SLB) helps you troubleshoot issues such as instance status, access, and health check exceptions. This helps you understand the running status of your SLB instances and promptly detect and resolve problems.

Self-service troubleshooting

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

NLB supports security groups

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports security groups. You can add an NLB instance to a security group to allow or deny public or private access for the NLB instance.

• Add an NLB instance to a security group

• Configure a security group for an NLB instance to implement access control based on listeners or ports

• Configure an NLB security group to implement a blacklist and whitelist policy

TCP/SSL listeners of NLB support mutual authentication

Update

TCP/SSL listeners of Network Load Balancer (NLB) support mutual authentication.

• Add a TCP/SSL listener

• Use NLB to implement TCP/SSL offloading (mutual authentication)

ALB is integrated with Quota Center

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) is integrated with Quota Center, allowing you to self-manage and view ALB general and privilege quotas in Quota Center.

• ALB quotas

• Manage ALB quotas

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

NLB is commercially available

New

The public preview and free trial of Network Load Balancer (NLB) have ended. NLB is now commercially available and billable.

Commercial release of Network Load Balancer

NLB supports all-port listeners

Update

Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports all-port listeners. After this feature is enabled, NLB can listen on all ports within the listener port range.

• Add a TCP listener

• Add a UDP listener

• Add a TCP/SSL listener

NLB supports Terraform

Update

You can create and manage NLB instances using Terraform.

Deploy and maintain an NLB instance

NLB supports binding Anycast EIPs

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports binding Anycast EIPs to provide Internet access. You can bind an Anycast EIP to an NLB instance by changing the network type.

• Change the network type of an NLB instance

• Use an NLB instance with an Anycast EIP for nearby access to multi-region services

Cloud-native gateway ALB Ingress is open-sourced on GitHub

Update

The cloud-native gateway ALB Ingress, based on Alibaba Cloud ALB, provides a more powerful Ingress traffic management method. It is compatible with Nginx Ingress, can handle complex business routing and automatic certificate discovery, and supports HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC protocols. It fully meets the requirements for high elasticity and large-scale Layer 7 traffic processing in cloud-native application scenarios with self-managed Kubernetes on ECS.

• Guide to using ALB Ingress in a self-managed Kubernetes cluster

• How to deploy the controller from source code

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB supports binding Anycast EIPs

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports binding Anycast EIPs to provide Internet access. You can bind an Anycast EIP to an ALB instance by changing the network type.

• Use an ALB instance with an Anycast EIP for nearby access to multi-region services

• Change the network type of an ALB instance

Regions that support WAF-enabled ALB are updated

Update

This update adds information about WAF-enabled ALB and the regions that support it. It also provides instructions on how to enable and manage WAF-enabled ALB in a one-stop manner.

Enable WAF protection for an ALB instance

ALB supports traffic mirroring to IP-based server groups

Update

The traffic mirroring action in the forwarding rules of an Application Load Balancer (ALB) listener supports mirroring traffic to IP-based server groups.

Add a forwarding rule

NLB supports obtaining source addresses through Proxy Protocol

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) supports using Proxy Protocol to carry the client's real IP address to the backend server.

Obtain client real IP addresses through an NLB instance

NLB supports attaching IDC servers

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) server groups support configuring IP-based backend servers. You can use a combination of NLB and CEN Transit Router to enable NLB to forward requests to IDC servers.

Use an NLB instance to attach IDC servers in the same region

Feature

Change type

Overview

References

ALB supports IPv6 load balancing

New

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports IPv6 load balancing. You only need to purchase a dual-stack ALB instance and configure server groups and listeners to forward IPv6 client traffic to IPv4 and IPv6 backend services.

• ALB instances

• Quickly implement IPv6 load balancing with ALB

• Create and manage an ALB instance

• Create and manage server groups

Feature name

Change type

Overview

References

Advanced features for ALB Ingress

Update

Alibaba Cloud ALB Ingress supports cross-domain configurations, persistent backend connections, and queries per second (QPS) throttling.

Advanced Features

Feature name

Change type

Function Overview

References

NLB is in public preview

New

Network Load Balancer (NLB) is in public preview. NLB is a next-generation Layer 4 load balancing service from Alibaba Cloud for the Internet of Everything (IoE). During the public preview period, you can try the NLB service for free.

• What is Network Load Balancer (NLB)?

• Quickly implement load balancing for IPv4 services using NLB

ALB supports consistent hashing based on URL parameters

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports consistent hashing based on URL parameters. This ensures that requests with the same URL parameters are scheduled to the same backend server.

Create and manage server groups

ALB supports the cross-domain feature for forwarding actions in listener rules.

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports cross-domain configuration for forwarding actions in listener rules. A cross-domain request occurs when the protocol, domain name, or port of the request URL sent by a client differs from the URL of the returned page.

Configure listener forwarding rules

ALB listener forwarding rules support regular expressions for domain names and paths in forwarding conditions.

Added

Listeners for an Application Load Balancer (ALB) support forwarding rules based on domain names or paths. You can use regular expressions when you configure forwarding conditions based on a domain name or path, or when you configure path-based forwarding actions to rewrite or redirect a path.

Configure forwarding rules for domain names and paths

Feature name

Change type

Function Overview

References

ALB supports the gRPC protocol

Add

Use Application Load Balancer (ALB) to load balance gRPC traffic. Currently, gRPC is supported only with frontend encryption and backend plaintext. To forward gRPC requests from clients to a backend server group that uses the gRPC protocol, configure a gRPC server group for the ALB instance, create an HTTPS listener with HTTP/2.0 enabled, and set up a health check for the gRPC protocol.

• Create and manage server groups

• Health checks

• Use ALB for gRPC load balancing

ALB adds support for a WAF-enabled edition

Update

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports a WAF-enabled edition. This edition adds WAF security protection to the features of the Standard Edition. When you select this edition, web service traffic for listeners configured on your ALB instance is automatically forwarded to WAF 3.0 for protection.

• Create and manage ALB instances

• Upgrade or downgrade ALB instances

ALB Ingress supports WAF protection

New

Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides one-stop security protection for websites and applications. WAF prevents data leaks and malicious CC attacks, blocks trojan uploads and website defacement, and provides virtual patching. When WAF protection is enabled for an ALB Ingress, traffic on the listener ports of the ALB instance is protected.

None

Feature Name

Change Type

Overview

References

ALB supports Function Compute as a backend service

New

ALB supports adding backend servers of the Function Compute (FC) type. You can configure ALB and FC to forward requests from ALB to FC.

Add Function Compute as a backend service

Feature name

Change type

Function overview

References

Application Load Balancer (ALB) Ingress supports the gRPC protocol

New

ALB supports the gRPC protocol. Simply add the alb.ingress.kubernetes.io/backend-protocol: "grpc" annotation.

Backend HTTPS and gRPC protocols

Deploy ALB Ingress gateways in Serverless Kubernetes (ASK) Knative

New

Knative is an open-source serverless application framework built on Kubernetes. It helps you deploy and manage modern serverless workloads. ALB is a load balancing service for application layer scenarios that use protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC. It provides high elasticity and can process large-scale Layer 7 traffic. ASK now supports deploying ALB gateways in Knative.

Use an ALB gateway

Feature name

Change type

Feature overview

References

Application Load Balancer (ALB) can attach servers from VPCs in other regions.

New

ALB server groups support adding backend servers by IP address. Configure an ALB instance and a Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) TransitRouter to forward requests to servers in other regions.

Attach servers in cross-region VPCs using an ALB

Application Load Balancer (ALB) supports attaching local IDC servers

New

Server groups for an Application Load Balancer (ALB) support backend servers that are specified by IP address. You can configure a combination of products, such as ALB and CEN TransitRouter, to forward requests from ALB to local IDC servers.

Use ALB to attach IDC servers in the same region

Feature

Overview

References

Manage ALB Ingresses in the ACK console

The routing management page in the ACK console now provides an option to create ALB Ingresses. You can use the configuration wizard to create an Ingress rule that uses an ALB instance for Layer 7 forwarding. You can also add multiple configurations for the ALB.

Create and use an ALB Ingress to expose services

Increased Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for multi-zone Application Load Balancers (ALB)

The service availability Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for multi-zone Application Load Balancers (ALB) has increased from 99.95% to 99.995%.

Server Load Balancer Service Level Agreement

Feature name

Function overview

References

Cloud-native gateway ALB Ingress is published

The cloud-native gateway ALB Ingress is built on Alibaba Cloud ALB to provide powerful Ingress traffic management. It is compatible with Nginx Ingress, handles complex business routing, and automatically discovers certificates. The gateway supports the HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC protocols. It meets the demands for high elasticity and large-scale Layer 7 traffic processing in ACK and ASK native application scenarios.

ALB Ingress management

Feature name

Function Overview

References

ALB subscription resource plans

ALB resource plans are subscription packages offered by ALB. They provide greater discounts than the pay-as-you-go billing method. After you purchase a resource plan, it automatically offsets the Load Balancer Capacity Unit (LCU) and instance fees incurred by your ALB instances. You can also set a flexible effective period for the resource plan as needed. This makes resource plans ideal for businesses with fixed budgets.

• ALB resource plans

• Purchase a resource plan

Feature name

Function overview

References

ALB support for Internet Shared Bandwidth

When you create an ALB instance, you can select an existing EIP instance and choose whether to add the ALB instance to an Internet Shared Bandwidth instance. After the ALB instance is added to an Internet Shared Bandwidth instance, the ALB instance shares the bandwidth of the Internet Shared Bandwidth instance. This reduces public bandwidth costs.

Quickly implement load balancing for IPv4 services with ALB

Feature

Function Overview

References

CLB support for obtaining source addresses using the Proxy Protocol

CLB Layer 4 listeners support the Proxy Protocol to add original connection information to the TCP header. This information includes details such as source IP addresses, destination IP addresses, source ports, and destination ports. This process does not discard or overwrite any existing data.

Obtain the originating IP address of a client through a CLB Layer 4 listener

Feature name

Function Overview

References

ALB supports mutual authentication

ALB supports the mutual authentication feature for its HTTPS listeners.

• Add an HTTPS listener

• Manage certificates

• Deploy an HTTPS service with mutual authentication using ALB

ALB supports forwarding rules for responses

ALB forwarding rules can be configured for both requests and responses. Support for response-based rules is now available.

Configure forwarding rules for a listener

Feature name

Function overview

References

CLB Cloud Monitor feature optimization

CLB and Cloud Monitor optimized the monitoring feature. Health check data for listeners no longer includes health check data for forwarding rules.

Set an alert rule

Feature name

Function overview

References

Application Load Balancer (ALB) public preview

ALB is in public preview. You can try the application-layer load balancing service for free.

What is Application Load Balancer (ALB)?

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Health check probe

TCP

UDP

HTTP

HTTPS

Health check probe

Server Load Balancer overview page

TCP

UDP

HTTP

HTTPS

-

Feature

Supported listeners

References

Expanded region support for using the same port for TCP and UDP listeners

TCP

UDP

• Add a TCP listener

• Add a UDP listener

Add secondary private IP addresses of Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) as backend servers

UDP

TCP

HTTP

HTTPS

Add backend servers using ENIs

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

UDP and TCP listeners can use the same port on a single Server Load Balancer (SLB) instance.

UDP

TCP

• Add a TCP listener

• Add a UDP listener

Support for Elliptic Curve (EC) keys.

HTTPS

Certificate requirements and format conversion

Support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3.

HTTPS

TLS security policy

Health checks for Layer 7 listeners support the GET method.

HTTPS

HTTP

• HTTP/HTTPS listeners

• Add an HTTPS listener

Feature

Supported listeners

References

Support for querying the availability of resources in a zone using an API

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

DescribeAvailableResource

Support for IPv6

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Using CLB IPv6 instances

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Manage idle instances

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Manage idle CLB instances

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Configure listener forwarding (redirect)

HTTP

Configure listener forwarding (redirect)

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Backend servers support Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) from ECS instances

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Add backend servers using ENIs

Feature

Supported listeners

References

Support for certificates that are issued or hosted in Alibaba Cloud SSL Certificates Service.

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Create a certificate

Support for IPv6

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Use CLB IPv6 instances

Advanced configurations for forwarding rules, such as custom scheduling algorithms, session persistence, and health checks.

HTTP

HTTPS

Forward requests based on domain names or URL paths

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Batch modification of backend server port numbers and weights

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

• Add and manage Elastic Compute Service instances in a default server group

• Create and manage vServer groups

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Query Quota (API)

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

-

New console (China site (aliyun.com))

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Create and manage CLB instances

Support for the consistent hash algorithm, along with Layer 4 support for the QUIC protocol and UDP session persistence

UDP

TCP

• Add a TCP listener

• Add a UDP listener

Feature

Supported listeners

References

Custom TLS versions

HTTPS

• TLS security policy

• Add an HTTPS listener

IPv6 support

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Use IPv6 CLB instances

Feature Name

Supported Listeners

References

HTTP 2.0 support

HTTPS

Add an HTTPS listener

Support for attaching multiple certificates (SNI)

HTTPS

Configure multiple HTTPS websites for a single CLB instance

Access control now supports blacklists and whitelists

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

• Access control overview

• Enable access control

Access log feature

HTTP

HTTPS

Configure CLB access logs

Support for adding ECS elastic network interfaces (ENIs) as backend servers (OpenAPI)

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

AddBackendServers

Feature

Supported listeners

References

Custom timeouts for Layer 7 listeners

HTTP

HTTPS

• HTTP/HTTPS listeners

• Add an HTTPS listener

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Support for the WS and WSS protocols

HTTP

HTTPS

Use CLB to push real-time information with the WebSocket protocol

Support for the HTTP 2.0 protocol

HTTPS

HTTP/HTTPS listeners

Feature

Supported listeners

References

View instance-level Alibaba Cloud Security thresholds

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Anti-DDoS Origin Basic

Guaranteed-performance instances

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Guaranteed-performance instance FAQ

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Added Layer 7 monitoring metrics, such as queries per second (QPS).

HTTP

HTTPS

View CLB monitoring information

Layer 4 listeners now support custom timeout periods.

TCP

Add a TCP listener

Listeners of an instance can now use Internet Shared Bandwidth.

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

• Add a TCP listener

• Add a UDP listener

• HTTP and HTTPS listeners

• Add an HTTPS listener

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Support for primary/secondary server groups

UDP

TCP

Create and manage primary/secondary server groups

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Support for adding HTTP header fields

HTTP

HTTPS

• HTTP/HTTPS listeners

• Add an HTTPS listener

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Forwarding based on domain names and paths

HTTP

HTTPS

Forwarding based on domain names or URL paths

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Support for multi-zone deployment

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Regions supported by CLB

Feature name

Supported listener

References

TCP listeners support HTTP health checks

TCP

Add a TCP listener

Feature

Supported listeners

Reference

Support for virtual private clouds (VPCs)

HTTPS

HTTP

UDP

TCP

Create and manage CLB instances

Feature name

Supported listener

References

HTTPS protocol support

HTTPS

Add an HTTPS listener

Feature name

Supported listeners

References

Server Load Balancer launched

HTTP

TCP

CLB instance