Server Load Balancer:Integrate ALB with GA to enable application acceleration

GA overview

GA uses stable BGP lines and the congestion-free global network of Alibaba Cloud to accelerate Internet-facing applications. GA can reduce network latency, network jitters, and packet loss when your business system is deployed across regions or accessible to global users. Users can access your business system by connecting to the nearest access points worldwide. GA ensures high availability and high performance of web applications. For more information about GA, see What is Global Accelerator?

After ALB is integrated with GA, you can enable GA in the ALB console, without the need to configure or manage GA in the GA console. This greatly simplifies the configuration process.

Key features

• Application acceleration: Requests from global users are routed to the nearest access points to improve user experience.

• Simplified configurations: GA can be configured and enabled in the ALB console after simple configurations.

Use scenarios

GA is ideal for accelerating access from global users in multiple regions, such as in the following scenarios:

• Game platform acceleration: Game platforms, such as logon systems and ecommerce systems, can use GA to reduce user complaints about slow logons.

• Enterprise application acceleration: Multinational corporations can use GA to improve collaboration efficiency and experience of global employees.

• Internet application acceleration: Internet applications can use GA to improve user experience and loyalty. GA helps you increase product popularity.

Examples

A company deployed a high-availability service on ALB in a region, and the service is accessible to global users in multiple regions. Due to poor Internet quality, some users experience high network latency.

To address the preceding issues, the company integrates ALB with GA to route user requests to the nearest access points, which greatly improves user experience.

Limits

• Each ALB instance can be associated with only one GA instance.

• GA is not supported in the following scenarios:

  • The ALB instance is not associated with a listener.

  • The ALB instance or listener is being modified.

  • The ALB instance is associated with a QUIC listener.

  • The HTTPS listener associated with the ALB instance is in the following scenarios:

    • Mutual authentication is enabled for the HTTPS listener.

    • The HTTPS listener uses a custom TLS policy.

    • The HTTPS listener uses an additional certificate.

  • A listener of the ALB instance is associated with a gRPC server group.

  • GA is not available in the region of the ALB instance. For more information about the regions in which GA is available, see Acceleration areas and regions.

  • The public CIDR block of the endpoint used by the GA instance is on the IP blacklist of the listener associated with the Internet-facing ALB instance or overlaps with a CIDR block on the IP whitelist. For more information, see How do I view the endpoint group IP addresses of a GA instance?

Prerequisites

• An Internet-facing or internal-facing ALB instance is created. For more information, see Create an ALB instance.

• A server group is created. For more information, see Create and manage server groups.

• Two Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances are added to the server group, and applications are deployed on the ECS instances. In this example, the ECS instances are named ECS01 and ECS02.

  Sample commands for deploying test applications on ECS instances

  Sample command for deploying testing applications on ECS01:

  yum install -y nginx
  systemctl start nginx.service
  cd /usr/share/nginx/html/
  echo "Hello World ! This is ECS01." > index.html

  Sample command for deploying testing applications on ECS02:

  yum install -y nginx
  systemctl start nginx.service
  cd /usr/share/nginx/html/
  echo "Hello World ! This is ECS02." > index.html

• (Optional) A custom domain name is prepared. For more information, see Register a domain name on Alibaba Cloud.

• A listener is created. For more information, see Add an HTTP listener and Add an HTTPS listener. To create an HTTPS listener, you must purchase or upload an SSL certificate in Certificate Management Service and associate the certificate with the domain name. For more information, see Get started with Certificate Management Service.

Procedure

What to do next

View the acceleration status

On the Integrated Services tab, the Global Accelerator card displays the ID, domain name, and status of the GA instance.

Disable application acceleration

To disable application acceleration for an ALB instance, delete the GA instance in the GA console or delete the ALB listener and endpoint group that are associated with the GA instance.

FAQ

What type of GA instance is created?

A pay-as-you-go standard GA instance is created.

What additional fees are charged after GA is enabled?

You are charged GA fees after GA is enabled. GA fees include GA instance fees, capacity unit (CU) fees, and data transfer fees. For more information, see Billing of pay-as-you-go GA instances.

After an ALB listener is added, why is GA not enabled for the listener?

ALB listener information is synchronized to GA only the first time you enable GA. Listener updates are not automatically synchronized to GA. You must manually manage listener information in the GA console.

Why do the access control policies of ALB not take effect after GA is enabled?

After GA is enabled, the accelerated domain name is the domain name of the GA instance. As a result, the ALB control policies do not take effect.

To control access from IP addresses, configure access control policies for the GA instance. For more information, see GA access control.

References

By default, cross-border communication uses premium bandwidth for acceleration. If you require higher network quality, use the cross-border Express Connect circuits of China Unicom. For more information, see Select and purchase GA resources.