What's new in Azure Load Balancer?
Azure Load Balancer is updated regularly. Stay up to date with the latest announcements. This article provides you with information about:
- The latest releases
- Known issues
- Bug fixes
- Deprecated functionality (if applicable)
You can also find the latest Azure Load Balancer updates and subscribe to the RSS feed here.
Recent releases
| Type | Name | Description | Date added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feature | Gateway Load Balancer IPv6 support is now generally available | Azure Gateway Load Balancer now supports IPv6 traffic, enabling you to distribute IPv6 traffic through Gateway Load Balancer before it reaches your dual-stack applications. Now you can add IPv6 frontend IP addresses and backend pools to Gateway Load Balancer. This allows you to inspect, protect, or mirror both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic flows using third-party or custom network virtual appliances (NVAs). Both internet inbound and outbound IPv6 traffic flows can now be routed through Gateway Load Balancer. Learn more about Gateway Load Balancer or our supported third-party partners. | September 2023 |
| Feature | Azure’s cross-region Load Balancer is now generally available | Azure Load Balancer’s Global tier is a cloud-native global network load balancing solution. With cross-region Load Balancer, you can distribute traffic across multiple Azure regions with ultra-low latency and high performance. Azure cross-region Load Balancer provides customers a static globally anycast IP address. Through this global IP address, you can easily add or remove regional deployments without interruption. Learn more about cross-region load balancer | July 2023 |
| Feature | Inbound ICMPv6 pings and traceroute are now supported on Azure Load Balancer (General Availability) | Azure Load Balancer now supports ICMPv6 pings to its frontend and inbound traceroute support to both IPv4 and IPv6 frontends. Learn more about how to test reachability of your load balancer. | June 2023 |
| Feature | Inbound ICMPv4 pings are now supported on Azure Load Balancer (General Availability) | Azure Load Balancer now supports ICMPv4 pings to its frontend, enabling the ability to test reachability of your load balancer. Learn more about how to test reachability of your load balancer. | May 2023 |
| SKU | Basic Load Balancer is retiring on September 30, 2025 | Basic Load Balancer will retire on 30 September 2025. Make sure to migrate to Standard SKU before this date. | September 2022 |
| SKU | Gateway Load Balancer now generally available | Gateway Load Balancer is a new SKU of Azure Load Balancer targeted for scenarios requiring transparent NVA (network virtual appliance) insertion. Learn more about Gateway Load Balancer or our supported third party partners. | July 2022 |
| SKU | Gateway Load Balancer public preview | Gateway Load Balancer is a fully managed service enabling you to deploy, scale, and enhance the availability of third party network virtual appliances (NVAs) in Azure. You can add your favorite third party appliance whether it's a firewall, inline DDoS appliance, deep packet inspection system, or even your own custom appliance into the network path transparently – all with a single action. | November 2021 |
| Feature | Support for IP-based backend pools (General Availability) | Azure Load Balancer supports adding and removing resources from a backend pool via an IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. This enables easy management of containers, virtual machines, and Virtual Machine Scale Sets associated with Load Balancer. It will also allow IP addresses to be reserved as part of a backend pool before the associated resources are created. Learn more here | March 2021 |
| Feature | Instance Metadata support for Standard SKU Load Balancers and Public IPs | Metadata of Standard Public IP addresses and Standard Load Balancer can now be retrieved through Azure Instance Metadata Service (IMDS). The metadata is available from within the running instances of virtual machines (VMs) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets instances. You can use the metadata to manage your virtual machines. Learn more here | February 2021 |
| Feature | Public IP SKU upgrade from Basic to Standard without losing IP address | As you move from Basic to Standard Load Balancers, retain your public IP address. Learn more here | January 2021 |
| Feature | Support for moves across resource groups | Standard Load Balancer and Standard Public IP support for resource group moves. | October 2020 |
| Feature | Cross-region load balancing with Global tier on Standard LB | Azure Load Balancer supports Cross Region Load Balancing. Previously, Standard Load Balancer had a regional scope. With this release, you can load balance across multiple Azure regions via a single, static, global anycast Public IP address. | September 2020 |
| Feature | Azure Load Balancer Insights using Azure Monitor | Built as part of Azure Monitor for Networks, customers now have topological maps for all their Load Balancer configurations and health dashboards for their Standard Load Balancers preconfigured with metrics in the Azure portal. Get started and learn more | June 2020 |
| Validation | Addition of validation for HA ports | A validation was added to ensure that HA port rules and non HA port rules are only configurable when Floating IP is enabled. Previously, this configuration would go through, but not work as intended. No change to functionality was made. You can learn more here | June 2020 |
| Feature | IPv6 support for Azure Load Balancer (generally available) | You can have IPv6 addresses as your frontend for your Azure Load Balancers. Learn how to create a dual stack application here | April 2020 |
| Feature | TCP Resets on Idle Timeout (generally available) | Use TCP resets to create a more predictable application behavior. Learn more | February 2020 |
Known issues
The product group is actively working on resolutions for the following known issues:
| Issue | Description | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| IP-based Load Balancer outbound IP | IP-based Load Balancers are currently not secure-by-default and will use the backend instances' default outbound access IPs for outbound connections. If the Load Balancer is a public Load Balancer, either the default outbound access IPs or the Load Balancer's frontend IP may be used. | In order to prevent backend instances behind an IP-based Load Balancer from using default outbound access, use NAT Gateway for a predictable IP address and to prevent SNAT port exhaustion, or use the private subnet feature to secure your Load Balancer. |
| numberOfProbes, "Unhealthy threshold" | Health probe configuration property numberOfProbes, otherwise known as "Unhealthy threshold" in Portal, isn't respected. Load Balancer health probes will probe up/down immediately after one probe regardless of the property's configured value. | To control the number of successful or failed consecutive probes necessary to mark backend instances as healthy or unhealthy, use the property "probeThreshold" instead. |
Next steps
For more information about Azure Load Balancer, see What is Azure Load Balancer? and frequently asked questions.