Backend pool management

The backend pool is a critical component of the load balancer. The backend pool defines the group of resources that serve traffic for a given load-balancing rule.

There are two ways of configuring a backend pool:

1. Network Interface Card (NIC)

2. IP address

To preallocate a backend pool with an IP address range that contains virtual machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets, configure the pool by IP address and virtual network ID. IP-based backend pools require a Standard Load Balancer.

This article focuses on configuration of IP-based backend pools.

Configure backend pool by IP address and virtual network

In scenarios with prepopulated backend pools, use IP addresses and a virtual network.

Before you begin, ensure that you have:

• An existing Standard Load Balancer and virtual network.
• Backend resources in the same virtual network as the load balancer.
• Permission to create or update load balancer, network interface, and virtual machine resources.
• An authenticated Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI session for the tool you use.

You configure backend pool management on the backend pool object as highlighted in the following examples.

PowerShell

Create a new backend pool:

$be = @{
    ResourceGroupName = 'myResourceGroup'
    LoadBalancerName = 'myLoadBalancer'
    Name = 'myBackendPool'
}
$backendPool = New-AzLoadBalancerBackendAddressPool @be

Update backend pool with a new IP from existing virtual network:  

$vnet = @{
    Name = 'myVnet'
    ResourceGroupName = 'myResourceGroup'
}
$virtualNetwork = Get-AzVirtualNetwork @vnet

$add1 = @{
    IpAddress = '10.0.0.5'
    Name = 'TestVNetRef'
    VirtualNetworkId = $virtualNetwork.Id
}
$ip1 = New-AzLoadBalancerBackendAddressConfig @add1
 
$backendPool.LoadBalancerBackendAddresses.Add($ip1) 

Set-AzLoadBalancerBackendAddressPool -InputObject $backendPool

Retrieve the backend pool information for the load balancer to confirm that the backend addresses are added to the backend pool:

$pool = @{
    ResourceGroupName = 'myResourceGroup'
    LoadBalancerName = 'myLoadBalancer'
    Name = 'myBackendPool'
}
Get-AzLoadBalancerBackendAddressPool @pool

Create a network interface and add it to the backend pool. Set the IP address to one of the backend addresses:

$net = @{
    Name = 'myNic'
    ResourceGroupName = 'myResourceGroup'
    Location = 'eastus'
    PrivateIpAddress = '10.0.0.5'
    Subnet = $virtualNetwork.Subnets[0]
}
$nic = New-AzNetworkInterface @net

Create a VM and attach the NIC with an IP address in the backend pool:

# Create a username and password for the virtual machine
$cred = Get-Credential

# Create a virtual machine configuration
$net = @{
    Name = 'myNic'
    ResourceGroupName = 'myResourceGroup'
}
$nic = Get-AzNetworkInterface @net

$vmc = @{
    VMName = 'myVM1'
    VMSize = 'Standard_DS1_v2'
}

$vmos = @{
    ComputerName = 'myVM1'
    Credential = $cred
}

$vmi = @{
    PublisherName = 'MicrosoftWindowsServer'
    Offer = 'WindowsServer'
    Skus = '2019-Datacenter'
    Version = 'latest'
}
$vmConfig = 
New-AzVMConfig @vmc | Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -Windows @vmos | Set-AzVMSourceImage @vmi | Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -Id $nic.Id


# Create a virtual machine using the configuration
$vm = @{
    ResourceGroupName = 'myResourceGroup'
    Zone = '1'
    Location = 'eastus'
    VM = $vmConfig

}
$vm1 = New-AzVM @vm

CLI

By using Azure CLI, you can populate the IP-based backend pool through command-line parameters or a JSON configuration file.

Create an IP-based backend pool with Azure CLI

Create and populate the backend pool via the command-line parameters:

az network lb address-pool create \
--resource-group myResourceGroup \
--lb-name myLB \
--name myBackendPool \
--vnet {VNET resource ID} \
--backend-address name=addr1 ip-address=10.0.0.4 \
--backend-address name=addr2 ip-address=10.0.0.5

Create and populate the Backend Pool via JSON configuration file:

az network lb address-pool create \
--resource-group myResourceGroup \
--lb-name myLB \
--name myBackendPool \
--vnet {VNET resource ID} \
--backend-address-config-file @config_file.json

JSON configuration file:

        [
          {
            "name": "address1",
            "virtualNetwork": "/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/resourceGroups/{resource-group-name}/providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/{vnet-name}",
            "ipAddress": "10.0.0.4"
          },
          {
            "name": "address2",
            "virtualNetwork": "/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/resourceGroups/{resource-group-name}/providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/{vnet-name}",
            "ipAddress": "10.0.0.5"
          }
        ]

Verify backend addresses with Azure CLI

Retrieve the backend pool information for the load balancer to confirm that the backend addresses are added to the backend pool:

az network lb address-pool show \
--resource-group myResourceGroup \
--lb-name MyLb \
--name MyBackendPool

Create a network interface with Azure CLI

Create a network interface and add it to the backend pool. Set the IP address to one of the backend addresses:

az network nic create \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --name myNic \
  --vnet-name myVnet \
  --subnet mySubnet \
  --network-security-group myNetworkSecurityGroup \
  --lb-name myLB \
  --private-ip-address 10.0.0.4

Create a virtual machine with Azure CLI

Create a VM and attach the NIC with an IP address in the backend pool:

az vm create \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --name myVM \
  --nics myNic \
  --image Ubuntu2204 \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys

Limitations for IP-based backend pools

• You can only use IP-based backend pools with Standard Load Balancers.
• The backend resources must be in the same virtual network as the load balancer.
• Backend instances in an IP-based backend pool must be virtual machines or virtual machine scale sets. You can't attach other PaaS services.
• A load balancer with an IP-based backend pool can't function as a Private Link service.
• You can't place Private endpoint resources in an IP-based backend pool.
• IP-based backend pools don't support ACI containers.
• Load balancers or services such as Application Gateway can't be placed in the backend pool of the load balancer.
• Inbound NAT Rules can't be specified by IP address.
• You can configure both IP-based and NIC-based backend pools for the same load balancer. You can't create a single backend pool that mixes backend addresses targeted by NIC and IP address within the same pool.
• A virtual machine in the same virtual network as an internal load balancer can't access the frontend of the ILB and its backend VMs simultaneously.
• Internet routing preference IPs aren't currently supported with IP-based backend pools. If you use internet routing preference IPs in IP-based backend pools, they're billed and routed through the default Microsoft global network.
• Performing move-related operations on VNETs that are attached to IP-based backend pools isn't supported.
• If backend pools are constantly changing (due to the constant addition or removal of backend resources). This can cause reset signals sent back to the source from the backend resource. As a workaround, you can use retries.

Next steps

In this article, you learned about Azure Load Balancer backend pool management and how to configure a backend pool by IP address and virtual network.

Learn more about Azure Load Balancer.

Review the REST API for IP-based backend pool management.