Edge-LB concepts

At its core, Edge-LB provides secure communication, load balancing, and workload distribution for external client requests wanting access to services running inside of DC/OS clusters. The application name, node, and port define the frontend for the inbound request. The load balancer applies its configuration rules and routes the inbound traffic to the appropriate backend servers that are configured to respond to the service request.

This type of external-to-internal or North-South load balancing is the most common scenario. However, you can also use Edge-LB for load balancing and workload distribution when both the clients requesting access and the services available are both running inside of the DC/OS cluster. This type of internal-only or East-West load balancing is most often managed through the DC/OS networking layer (dcos-net) by the distributed layer-4 load balancer dcos-l4lb (previously known as Minuteman). Edge-LB augments the native layer-4 load balancer by providing layer-7 load balancing for internal traffic and granular control over how traffic is routed for all inbound requests whether they originate inside or outside of the DC/OS cluster. For more information about the network stack and using the native layer-4 load balancer, see load balancing.