Load balancing at layer 4 using a single IP address and a load balancer

Unlike DNS Round Robin, load balancing at layer 4 usually requires some sort of load balancing device to be configured. Although, technically speaking, Windows Network Load Balancing would also be a valid option and doesn't require a load balancing device.

In the following recipe we will describe the steps that are necessary to set up your load balancing device for layer 4 load balancing. Because there are many vendors and device models out there, we will describe the principles to this setup but we won't be covering product-specific configuration steps.

Getting ready

To complete the following steps, you will need to use a virtual or hardware load balancer. The load balancer does not need to have any SSL offloading capabilities. In order for load balancing to work properly, you need to ensure that all Client Access Servers are configured with the same certificate. To guarantee the user experience, the configuration of the...