This topic describes the release notes for Server Load Balancer (SLB) and provides links to the relevant references.
July 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Network Load Balancer (NLB) is supported in more regions. | Update | NLB is supported in the India (Mumbai) and Indonesia (Jakarta) regions. | |
Cross-zone disaster recovery simulation and virtual IP address (VIP) probes are supported by NLB. | New feature | Cross-zone disaster recovery simulation is supported by NLB. You can simulate cross-zone disaster recovery scenarios by removing and restoring DNS records that are created for NLB instances. You can also probe the availability of the VIP in a zone that is in the Enabled state. | |
Additional certificates are supported by NLB. | New feature | Additional certificates can be added to NLB listeners that use SSL over TCP. This meets the requirements of scenarios in which multiple domain names are accessed or multiple server certificates are used. | |
Queries per second (QPS) throttling based on client IP addresses is supported by Application Load Balancer (ALB). | Update | QPS throttling based on client IP addresses is supported by ALB. You can use this feature to implement fine-grained QPS throttling. | |
HTTP/3 is supported by ALB. | New feature | HTTP/3 is supported by ALB. HTTP/3 is a new standard web protocol based on the iQUIC protocol. HTTP/3 reduces the web page loading time, reduces video rebuffering, improves the throughput of high-latency connections, and provides ultra-low latency for Internet services. | |
HTTPS health checks are supported by ALB. | Update | HTTPS health checks are supported by ALB. Health checks that use HTTPS, an end-to-end encryption protocol, allow you to detect the status of backend services in a more accurate manner and improve the security of services. |
June 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB is supported in more regions. | Update | NLB is supported in the South Korea (Seoul) and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) regions. |
May 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB is supported in more regions. | Update | NLB is supported in the following regions: China (Guangzhou), Japan (Tokyo), US (Virginia), and US (Silicon Valley). | |
NLB instances can be added to advanced security groups. | Update | NLB instances can be added to advanced security groups. Advanced security groups support more private IP addresses. NLB instances can be added to advanced security groups in scenarios that require high security group capacities. | |
Managed Service for Prometheus is supported by ALB. | New feature | ALB can be connected to Managed Service for Prometheus. You can view the monitoring data of ALB by using the metrics, dashboards, and alerts provided by Managed Service for Prometheus. |
April 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Operation logs are supported by NLB. | New feature | NLB is integrated with ActionTrail. You can query events that occurred within 90 days or more than 90 days ago in multiple regions in the NLB console. | |
Fine-grained monitoring is supported by ALB. | Update | Metrics that are aggregated at one-second intervals are supported by the access logs of ALB. You can use the metrics to identify exceptions that are related to transient jitters. | |
Advanced features are supported by ALB Ingresses. | Update |
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March 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) that are protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium can be associated with NLB instances. | New feature | EIPs that are protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium can be associated with NLB instances. The NLB instances can use the EIPs to access the Internet in a secure manner. You can associate an EIP protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium with an NLB instance when you create an NLB instance or when you change the network type of an NLB instance. EIPs protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium can mitigate DDoS attacks at the Tbit/s level, and are ideal for scenarios that require high security and low latency. | |
Instance diagnostics is supported by ALB. | New feature | ALB is connected to Network Intelligence Service (NIS) and provides the instance diagnostics feature. The instance diagnostics feature can diagnose the configurations and running status of instances, generate diagnostic reports, and provide suggestions on how to fix anomalies. |
February 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
A user guide is provided to help you migrate services from a Layer 7 listener of Classic Load Balancer (CLB) to ALB. | New feature | Compared with CLB, ALB provides better load balancing capabilities at Layer 7 and provides advanced routing features. A user guide is provided to help you migrate services from a Layer 7 listener of CLB to ALB. This way, ALB provides services at Layer 7 instead of CLB. | |
EIPs that are protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium can be associated with ALB instances. | New feature | EIPs that are protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium can be associated with ALB instances. The ALB instances can use the EIPs to access the Internet in a secure manner. You can associate an EIP protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium with an ALB instance when you create an ALB instance or change the network type of an ALB instance. EIPs protected by Anti-DDoS Pro/Premium can mitigate DDoS attacks at the Tbit/s level, and are ideal for scenarios that require high security and low latency. | |
More services can be integrated with ALB by using ALB Ingresses. | Update |
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NLB is integrated with Quota Center. | New feature | NLB is integrated with Quota Center. You can apply for and view the general quotas of NLB in the Quota Center console. |
January 2023
Feature | Type | Description | References |
The troubleshooting feature is available in the SLB console. | New feature | The troubleshooting feature is provided to help you troubleshoot instance status issues, access issues, and health check exceptions. The feature helps you monitor the status of SLB instances and identify and resolve issues in a timely manner. |
December 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB instances can be added to security groups. | New feature | NLB instances can be added to security groups. An NLB instance can be added to a security group to allow or deny access from the NLB instance to the Internet or private networks. | |
Mutual authentication is supported by NLB listeners that use SSL over TCP. | Update | Mutual authentication is supported by NLB listeners that use SSL over TCP. | |
ALB is integrated with Quota Center. | New feature | ALB is integrated with Quota Center. You can apply for and view general quotas and privileges of ALB in the Quota Center console. |
November 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB is available for commercial use. | New feature | The public preview and time-limited free trial of NLB have ended. NLB is available for commercial use. | [November 8, 2022] Announcement on the commercialization of NLB |
Listening by port range is supported by NLB. | Update | Listening by port range is supported by NLB. After you enable this feature, NLB can listen on all ports in the specified port range. | |
Terraform is supported by NLB. | Update | Terraform can be used to create and manage NLB instances. | |
Anycast EIPs can be associated with NLB instances. | New feature | Anycast EIPs can be associated with NLB instances to enable the NLB instances to provide services over the Internet. To associate an Anycast EIP with an NLB instance, you can change the network type of the NLB instance. | |
The source code of ALB Ingresses is available on GitHub. | Update | ALB Ingresses are compatible with NGINX Ingresses, and provide improved traffic routing capabilities based on ALB. ALB Ingresses support complex routing, automatic certificate discovery, and the HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC protocols. In scenarios where you deploy cloud-native applications in self-managed Kubernetes clusters, ALB Ingresses meet the requirements for ultra-high elasticity and balancing of heavy traffic loads at Layer 7. |
October 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Anycast EIPs can be associated with ALB instances. | New feature | Anycast EIPs can be associated with ALB instances to enable the ALB instances to provide services over the Internet. To associate an Anycast EIP with an ALB instance, you can change the network type of the ALB instance. | |
The information about the regions that support WAF-enabled ALB instances is updated. | Update | A description of and region information about WAF-enabled ALB instances are provided. A user guide is provided to help you create and manage WAF-enabled ALB instances. | |
Traffic can be mirrored to a server group of the IP type by using ALB. | Update | A forwarding rule can be added to a listener of ALB to mirror traffic to a server group of the IP type. | |
Proxy Protocol can be used by NLB to retrieve client IP addresses. | New feature | Proxy Protocol is supported by NLB to pass client IP addresses to backend servers. | |
On-premises servers can be added to NLB. | New feature | Backend servers can be specified by IP address for a server group of NLB. You can use NLB and CEN transit routers to enable NLB to forward requests to servers in a data center. |
September 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
IPv6 is supported by ALB. | New feature | IPv6 is supported by ALB. You can purchase a dual-stack ALB instance and configure server groups and listeners to forward traffic from IPv6 clients to IPv4 and IPv6 backend services. |
August 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Advanced features are supported by ALB Ingresses. | Update | Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS), persistent TCP connections, and QPS throttling are supported by ALB Ingresses. |
July 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
NLB is released for public preview. | New feature | NLB is released for public preview. NLB instances are next-generation Layer 4 load balancers developed by Alibaba Cloud for the Internet of Everything (IoE). You can use NLB free of charge during the public preview | |
Consistent hashing based on URLs is supported by ALB. | Update | Consistent hashing based on URLs is supported by ALB. Requests for the same URL are forwarded to the same backend server. | |
CORS is supported by forwarding rules of ALB. | Update | CORS is supported by forwarding rules of ALB. If the response is returned from a URL different from the URL requested by the client, CORS is enabled. The URL includes a protocol, a domain name, and a port. | |
Regular expressions can be specified as the conditions of domain name-based and URL-based forwarding rules of ALB. | New feature | Domain name-based and URL-based forwarding rules are supported by ALB listeners. You can specify a regular expression as the condition of a domain name-based forwarding rule or a URL-based forwarding rule. You can also specify a regular expression in the URL for a rewrite or redirect action. |
June 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Google Remote Procedure Call (gRPC) is supported by ALB. | New feature | The gRPC protocol can be used by ALB to provide load balancing services. If gRPC is used, only frontend data transmission is encrypted and backend data is transmitted in plaintext. After you create a gRPC server group for an ALB instance, associate the server group with an HTTPS listener, and enable HTTP/2 and health checks, the ALB instance can forward gRPC requests to the gRPC server group. | |
WAF-enabled ALB instances are available. | Update | WAF-enabled ALB instances are available. As an upgrade from standard ALB instances, WAF-enabled ALB instances are integrated with Web Application Firewall (WAF) 3.0 to protect your web applications. Network traffic is filtered by WAF before it is routed to ALB listeners. | |
WAF is supported by ALB Ingresses. | New feature | WAF is an all-in-one service that protects your websites and applications. You can use WAF to prevent data breaches, HTTP flood attacks, webshells, and web page tampering. WAF also provides virtual patches. After you enable WAF for an ALB Ingress, network traffic is filtered by WAF before it is routed to ALB listeners. | N/A |
March 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Functions of Function Compute can be specified as backend servers of ALB. | New feature | Functions of Function Compute can be specified as backend servers of ALB. ALB can be configured to forward requests from ALB to Function Compute. | Specify a function from Function Compute as a backend server of ALB |
February 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
The gRPC protocol is supported by ALB Ingresses. | New feature | The gRPC protocol is supported by ALB Ingresses. To use gRPC, add the annotation | |
ALB Ingresses can be deployed based on ASK Knative. | New feature | Knative is an open source and serverless application framework. Knative can help you deploy serverless workloads to Kubernetes and manage the workloads. ALB is a load balancing service intended for applications that use the HTTP, HTTPS, or Quick UDP Internet Connection (QUIC) protocol. ALB is highly scalable and can distribute large amounts of network traffic at Layer 7. ASK allows you to deploy ALB Ingresses based on Knative. |
January 2022
Feature | Type | Description | References |
Servers across virtual private clouds (VPCs) in different regions can be added to ALB. | New feature | Backend servers can be specified for server groups of ALB by IP address. Requests received by ALB can be routed to servers in other regions by using CEN transit routers. | Specify an ECS instance in a VPC as a backend server of ALB in a different region |
On-premises servers can be specified as backend servers of ALB. | New feature | Backend servers can be specified in the server groups of ALB by IP address. Requests received by ALB can be routed to on-premises servers by using CEN transit routers and other services. |
November 2021
Feature | Description | References |
ALB Ingresses can be created in the ACK console. | ALB Ingresses can be created in the ACK console. You can create Ingress rules for ALB Ingresses and customize Ingress configurations. ALB Ingresses use ALB instances to balance traffic loads at Layer 7. | |
A higher level of service uptime is guaranteed by ALB instances that support multi-zone deployment. | The service uptime guaranteed by ALB instances that support multi-zone deployment is increased from 99.95% to 99.995%. |
October 2021
Feature | Description | References |
ALB Ingresses are available. | ALB Ingresses are compatible with NGINX Ingresses, and provide improved traffic routing capabilities based on ALB instances. ALB Ingresses support complex routing, automatic certificate discovery, and the HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC protocols. In scenarios where you deploy cloud-native applications in ACK or ACK Serverless clusters, ALB Ingresses meet the requirements for ultra-high elasticity and balancing of heavy traffic loads at Layer 7. |
September 2021
Feature | Description | References |
ALB resource plans (subscription) are available. | Subscription resource plans are provided by ALB. After an ALB resource plan takes effect, it automatically offsets the Load Balancer Capacity Unit (LCU) fees and instance fees for ALB. Compared with the pay-as-you-go billing method, ALB resource plans are more cost-effective. You can specify the time when you want a resource plan to take effect as needed. ALB resource plans are suitable for enterprises on a fixed budget. |
August 2021
Feature | Description | References |
EIP bandwidth plans can be associated with ALB. | An existing EIP and an EIP bandwidth plan can be associated with an ALB instance when you create the ALB instance. After the ALB instance is associated with an EIP bandwidth plan, the ALB instance shares the bandwidth of the EIP bandwidth plan. This reduces bandwidth costs. |
July 2021
Feature | Description | References |
Proxy Protocol can be used by CLB to retrieve client IP addresses. | Proxy Protocol can be used by Layer 4 listeners of CLB to pass client IP addresses to backend servers. After Proxy Protocol is enabled, CLB adds a TCP header to the request without modifying the existing headers. The TCP header carries information such as the source IP address, destination IP address, source port, and destination port. | Enable Proxy Protocol for a Layer 4 listener to retrieve client IP addresses |
March 2021
Feature | Description | References |
Mutual authentication is supported by ALB. | Mutual authentication is supported by HTTPS listeners of ALB. | |
Outbound forwarding rules are supported by ALB. | Inbound and outbound forwarding rules are supported by ALB. |
January 2021
Feature | Description | References |
The monitoring feature of CLB is optimized. | The monitoring feature of CLB is optimized. By default, the health check data of forwarding rules is no longer displayed. |
October 2020
Feature | Description | References |
ALB is released for public preview. | A free trial for ALB, a load balancing service intended for Layer 7, is available. |
July 2019
Feature | Listener | References |
Health checks are supported. | TCP UDP HTTP HTTPS | |
The Overview page of SLB is available. | TCP UDP HTTP HTTPS | - |
June 2019
Feature | Listener | References |
UDP and TCP listeners that belong to the same SLB instance and listen on the same port are supported in more regions. | TCP UDP | |
Backend servers can be added by specifying secondary IP addresses of elastic network interfaces (ENIs) that are attached to ECS instances. | UDP TCP HTTP HTTPS |
May 2019
Feature | Listener | References |
A port can be listened on by both a UDP and a TCP listener within the same SLB instance. | UDP TCP | |
Elliptic curve keys are supported. | HTTPS | |
TLS 1.3 is supported. | HTTPS | |
The GET method for health checks is supported by Layer 7 listeners. | HTTPS HTTP |
April 2019
Feature | Listener | References |
Available resources in zones can be queried by calling the API. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
IPv6 is supported. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
January 2019
Feature | Listener | References |
Idle instance management is supported. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
November 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
HTTP requests can be redirected to HTTPS. | HTTP |
October 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
Backend servers can be added by specifying ENIs that are attached to ECS instances in the console. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
September 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
Certificates provided by Alibaba Cloud Certificate Management Service can be used. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
IPv6 is supported. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
Advanced configurations, such as custom scheduling algorithms, session persistence, and health checks, are supported in forwarding rules. | HTTP HTTPS |
August 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
The ports and weights of multiple backend servers can be modified at a time. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
July 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
Resource quotas can be queried by calling the API. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | - |
The console on the Alibaba Cloud China site is updated. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
Consistent hashing algorithms are supported. The QUIC protocol and UDP session persistence are supported by Layer 4 listeners. | UDP TCP |
June 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
Custom TLS versions are supported. | HTTPS | |
IPv6 is supported. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
May 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
HTTP/2 is supported. | HTTPS | |
Server Name Indication (SNI) is supported to allow multiple certificates to be associated with SLB. | HTTPS | Configure a CLB instance to serve multiple domain names over HTTPS |
Blacklists and whitelists can be configured to enforce access control. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
Access logs are supported. | HTTP HTTPS | |
Backend servers can be added by specifying ENIs that are attached to ECS instances in OpenAPI Explorer. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
April 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
Custom timeout periods can be specified for Layer 7 listeners. | HTTP HTTPS |
February 2018
Feature | Listener | References |
The WebSocket and WebSocket Secure protocols are supported. | HTTP HTTPS | |
HTTP/2 is supported. | HTTPS |
November 2017
Feature | Listener | References |
Alibaba Cloud Security thresholds of SLB instances can be viewed. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP | |
High-performance SLB instances are available. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
August 2017
Feature | Listener | References |
Layer 7 monitoring metrics such as QPS are supported. | HTTP HTTPS | |
Custom timeout periods can be specified for Layer 4 listeners. | TCP | |
The bandwidth of an SLB instance can be shared by its listeners. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
February 2017
Feature | Listener | References |
Primary/secondary server groups are supported. | UDP TCP |
November 2016
Feature | Listener | References |
HTTP headers can be added. | HTTP HTTPS |
March 2016
Feature | Listener | References |
Domain name-based and URL-based forwarding rules are supported. | HTTP HTTPS |
December 2015
Feature | Listener | References |
Cross-zone deployment is supported. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
July 2015
Feature | Listener | References |
HTTP health checks are supported by TCP listeners. | TCP |
April 2015
Feature | Listener | References |
VPCs are supported. | HTTPS HTTP UDP TCP |
January 2015
Feature | Listener | References |
HTTPS is supported. | HTTPS |
February 2014
Feature | Listener | References |
SLB is released. | HTTP TCP |