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Updating an application load balancer

Updating an application load balancer

You can update an IBM Cloud® Application Load Balancer for VPC (ALB) with the console, CLI, or API.

Updating an application load balancer in the console

To update an ALB in the IBM Cloud console, perform the following procedure:

  1. From your browser, open the IBM Cloud console and log in to your account.
  2. Select the Navigation menu Menu icon, then click Infrastructure VPC icon > Network > Load balancers.
  3. Select the Region of your load balancer.
  4. Select the load balancer that you want to update.
  5. Select Back-end pools if you need to edit a pool or virtual server instance parameters.
  6. Select Front-end listeners if you need to edit listener parameters. To update the Client/Server timeout values, select Edit from the Actions menu Actions icon in the row of the Listener that you want to edit. You can select a timeout value between 50 seconds and 2 hours (7200 seconds). This value is for both the client and server. If you need more than 2 hours, you can open a support case and provide a business requirement for the timeout value required.
  7. After you're done editing, select Save to save your changes.

The Active button on the upper left of your window now shows as Updating. When Updating changes back to Active, the update is done and the new changes are applied.

Updating an application load balancer from the CLI

There are multiple options to update your ALB from the CLI. For options, see VPC CLI reference for load balancers.

The following example shows how to use the CLI to update your ALB pool to use the algorithm least_connections and the port of the member:

Sample command:

ibmcloud is load-balancer-pool-update r006-99b5ab45-6357-42db-8b32-5d2c8aa62776 r006-3b66d605-6aa5-4166-9f66-b16054da3cb0 --algorithm least_connections

Sample output:

Updating pool r006-3b66d605-6aa5-4166-9f66-b16054da3cb0 of load balancer r006-99b5ab45-6357-42db-8b32-5d2c8aa62776 under account IBM Cloud Network Services as user test@ibm.com...

ID                         r006-3b66d605-6aa5-4166-9f66-b16054da3cb0
Name                       alb-pool
Protocol                   tcp
Algorithm                  least_connections
Instance group             ID   Name
                           -    -

Health monitor             Type   Port   Health monitor URL   Delay   Retries   Timeout
                           http   8080   /                    10      2         5

Session persistence type   source_ip
Members                    r006-61f8b000-a90d-4abe-909e-c507dffec565
Provision status           update_pending
Created                    2020-08-27T14:45:42.038-05:00

Sample command:

ibmcloud is load-balancer-pool-member-update r006-99b5ab45-6357-42db-8b32-5d2c8aa62776 r006-3b66d605-6aa5-4166-9f66-b16054da3cb0 r006-61f8b000-a90d-4abe-909e-c507dffec565 --port 6060

Sample output:

Updating member r006-61f8b000-a90d-4abe-909e-c507dffec565 of load balancer pool r006-3b66d605-6aa5-4166-9f66-b16054da3cb0 under account IBM Cloud Network Services as user test@ibm.com...

ID                 r006-61f8b000-a90d-4abe-909e-c507dffec565
Port               6060
Target             0716_6acdd058-4607-4463-af08-d4999d983945
Weight             70
Health             unknown
Created            2020-08-27T14:59:55.446-05:00
Provision status   update_pending

Updating an application load balancer timeout value from the CLI

The following example shows how to use the CLI to update your ALB timeout value:

  1. Get the listener ID:
ibmcloud is load-balancer LOAD_BALANCER_ID
  1. Verify the current listener details:
ibmcloud is load-balancer-listener [--load-balancer LOAD_BALANCER_ID] [--listener LISTENER_ID] [--output JSON]
  1. Update the timeout value:
ibmcloud is load-balancer-listener-update [--load-balancer LOAD_BALANCER_ID] [--listener LISTENER_ID] [--idle-connection-timeout VALUE_IN_SECONDS]

Where:

--load-balancer
ID or name of the load balancer.
--listener
ID or name of the listener.
--output
Output format, only JSON is supported.
-idle-connection-timeout
Idle connection timeout value in seconds.

Sample command:

ibmcloud is load-balancer-listener-update r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0 --idle-connection-timeout 90

Sample output:

Updating listener r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0 of load balancer r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c under account SoftLayer Internal - Network Operations as user labhatia@in.ibm.com...

ID                        r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0
Certificate instance      -
Connection limit          -
Ports                     22
Idle connection timeout   90
Protocol                  http
Default pool              -
Accept proxy protocol     false
Provision status          update_pending
Created                   2025-04-15T14:11:06+05:30

Updating an application load balancer with the API

The following example illustrates how to use the API to update the front-end listener port of an application load balancer. For example, if the front-end listener port was set to 80 and you want to update the port value to 90.

To update an application load balancer with the API, follow these steps:

  1. Set up your API environment.

  2. Use the following example to get the listener ID that you need for the update:

    Save the ID of the load balancer:

    export lbid="r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c"

    Install "jq" to view the output from the following command in clean JSON format.

    curl -H "Authorization: $iam_token" -X GET
"$vpc_api_endpoint/v1/load_balancers/$lbid?version=$api_version&generation=2" | jq

    Sample output:

    {
 "access_mode": "private",
 "attached_load_balancer_pool_members": [],
 "availability": "subnet",
 "created_at": "2024-12-23T06:29:04Z",
 "crn": "crn:v1:bluemix:public:is:br-sao:a/5a83dca0e9c3408788bac5da136a9e76::load-balancer:r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c",
 "dns": {
     "instance": {
     "crn": "crn:v1:bluemix:public:dns-svcs:global:a/74589ab5050034ede18fa510153e91f8:a2b96ed8-cea2-4db0-b60a-c02d99586d4f::"
     },
     "zone": {
     "id": "a9240f0c-da77-4c55-be84-1d56c549a4de"
     }
 },
 "failsafe_policy_actions": [
     "fail",
     "drop",
     "forward"
 ],
 "hostname": "ce351658-br-sao.test.com",
 "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/load_balancers/r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c",
 "id": "r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c",
 "instance_groups_supported": true,
 "is_private_path": false,
 "is_public": false,
 "listeners": [
     {
     "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/load_balancers/r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c/listeners/r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0",
     "id": "r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0"
     }
 ],
 "logging": {
     "datapath": {
     "active": true
     }
 },
 "name": "test-alb",
 "operating_status": "online",
 "pools": [
     {
     "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/load_balancers/r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c/pools/r042-40fe93a2-16f4-467d-b0e4-70c7b093e137",
     "id": "r042-40fe93a2-16f4-467d-b0e4-70c7b093e137",
     "name": "pooltest"
     }
 ],
 "private_ips": [
     {
     "address": "192.168.40.12",
     "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/subnets/02v7-3520cb95-db1a-4787-9bde-f9cb8e811685/reserved_ips/02v7-be9dd47d-3899-4f67-8f7d-0a38ee73a376",
     "id": "02v7-be9dd47d-3899-4f67-8f7d-0a38ee73a376",
     "name": "author-sabbatical-zookeeper-paddleboat",
     "resource_type": "subnet_reserved_ip"
     },
     {
     "address": "192.168.40.13",
     "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/subnets/02v7-3520cb95-db1a-4787-9bde-f9cb8e811685/reserved_ips/02v7-4a439c6a-15ed-43c0-910c-345d3af5f0c0",
     "id": "02v7-4a439c6a-15ed-43c0-910c-345d3af5f0c0",
     "name": "thinning-visitor-prance-chaps",
     "resource_type": "subnet_reserved_ip"
     }
 ],
 "profile": {
     "family": "application",
     "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/load_balancer/profiles/dynamic",
     "name": "dynamic"
 },
 "provisioning_status": "active",
 "public_ips": [],
 "resource_group": {
     "href": "https://resource-controller.cloud.ibm.com/v2/resource_groups/5710acc3545d425db62cb37037d17245",
     "id": "5710acc3545d425db62cb37037d17245",
     "name": "Default"
 },
 "resource_type": "load_balancer",
 "route_mode": false,
 "security_groups": [
     {
     "crn": "crn:v1:bluemix:public:is:br-sao:a/5a83dca0e9c3408788bac5da136a9e76::security-group:r042-f9a9b05b-9f19-4e65-a39c-8e5ccd1b0303",
     "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/security_groups/r042-f9a9b05b-9f19-4e65-a39c-8e5ccd1b0303",
     "id": "r042-f9a9b05b-9f19-4e65-a39c-8e5ccd1b0303",
     "name": "resent-wrongness-erasure-flaky"
     }
 ],
 "security_groups_supported": true,
 "source_ip_session_persistence_supported": true,
 "subnets": [
     {
     "crn": "crn:v1:bluemix:public:is:br-sao-3:a/5a83dca0e9c3408788bac5da136a9e76::subnet:02v7-3520cb95-db1a-4787-9bde-f9cb8e811685",
     "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/subnets/02v7-3520cb95-db1a-4787-9bde-f9cb8e811685",
     "id": "02v7-3520cb95-db1a-4787-9bde-f9cb8e811685",
     "name": "subnet-test-zone3",
     "resource_type": "subnet"
     }
 ],
 "udp_supported": false
}
    1. Save the listener ID that you want to update from the previous step. For example, save it in the variable listenerid.
    export listenerid="r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0"
    1. Update the listener port and client/server timeout values of the load balancer:
    curl -H "Authorization: $iam_token" -X PATCH
"$vpc_api_endpoint/v1/load_balancers/$lbid/listeners/$listenerid?version=$api_version&generation=2" \
    -d '{"idle_connection_timeout": 50 , "port": 8080}' | jq

    Sample output:

    {
    "id": "r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0",
    "href": "https://br-sao.iaas.cloud.ibm.com/v1/load_balancers/r042-ce351658-c236-4c99-8711-1414c5a6a99c/listeners/r042-a00f2544-a1d3-4f9b-af31-4c34990a01f0",
    "protocol": "http",
    "port": 8080,
    "port_min": 8080,
    "port_max": 8080,
    "provisioning_status": "update_pending",
    "created_at": "2025-04-15T08:41:06Z",
    "accept_proxy_protocol": false,
    "idle_connection_timeout": 50
}

You can set a timeout value between 50 and 7200 seconds. If you need more than 2 hours (7200 seconds), you can open a support case.