Create a Listener

You must configure listeners and backend servers for a load balancer to become fully operational.

After creating a load balancer, you can add listeners in either of the following ways:

• Going to Elastic Compute > Load Balancer > Listener > Create Listener.

• Select the target load balancer and choose Actions > Add Listener.

A listener defines how a load balancer accepts incoming traffic and forwards it to backend servers. It specifies the protocol, listening port, forwarding behavior, scheduling algorithm, backend server configuration, and health check settings. By creating listeners, you control how different types of traffic are distributed to backend servers.

Prerequisites

Before creating a listener, ensure that:

• A load balancer instance has been created.

• Backend servers (instances or IP addresses) are available in the same global VPC.

• Required ports are allowed by the load balancer’s associated security group.

Procedures

Go to Elastic Compute > Load Balancer > Listener > Create Listener.

1

Select a load balancer

Select an existing load balancer to which you want to add the listener. The load balancer name and ID are displayed for identification.

If no suitable load balancer exists, click New Load Balancer to create one.

2

Configure forwarding rules

Forwarding rules define how a listener processes incoming traffic and forwards it to backend servers. They determine:

• Traffic entry conditions (protocol and listening port)

• Forwarding mode (such as destination NAT)

• Scheduling algorithm used to distribute requests

See Edit Listener for more details about how to configure protocol, listening port, forwarding mode and scheduling algorithm.

3

Configure backend servers

Backend servers receive traffic forwarded by the listener. You can configure backend servers in one of the following ways:

• By Instance: Select backend servers directly from existing elastic compute instances.

• By IP Address: Manually specify backend server IP addresses.

See Add Backend Servers for more details about how to configure configure private IPv4, port and weight.

4

Configure health checks

Health checks monitor the availability of backend servers and ensure that traffic is routed only to healthy servers.

• Enable Configure health check to activate health monitoring.

• The load balancer automatically removes unhealthy servers from traffic distribution and re-adds them once they recover.

You can configure Fail-Open and select a protocol from TCP/HTTP/PING for health checks

See Modify Health Check for more details.

5

Label the listener

Provide a name for the listener to help identify its purpose. Use a clear and descriptive label, such as Listener-TCP-01.

The name must be 2 to 63 characters long and can contain letters, numbers, hyphens (-), underscores (_), slashes (/), and periods (.). It must start and end with a letter or number.

Result

After the listener is created, you can see it on the listener list page.

Click the listener name to go to Details page. You can check backend server list, forwarding rules, health check configuration and basic information.

After the listener is created and added to a load balancer:

• The load balancer starts accepting traffic on the specified protocol and ports.

• Traffic is distributed to backend servers based on the selected scheduling algorithm.

• Health checks continuously monitor backend server availability.

You can create multiple listeners on the same load balancer to handle different protocols, ports, or traffic types.