Get started creating an Internet facing load balancer with IPv6 using PowerShell for Resource Manager

An Azure load balancer is a Layer-4 (TCP, UDP) load balancer. The load balancer provides high availability by distributing incoming traffic among healthy service instances in cloud services or virtual machines in a load balancer set. Azure Load Balancer can also present those services on multiple ports, multiple IP addresses, or both.

Example deployment scenario

The following diagram illustrates the load balancing solution being deployed in this article.

In this scenario you'll create the following Azure resources:

• an Internet-facing Load Balancer with an IPv4 and an IPv6 Public IP address
• two load balancing rules to map the public VIPs to the private endpoints
• an Availability Set to that contains the two VMs
• two virtual machines (VMs)
• a virtual network interface for each VM with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses assigned

Deploying the solution using the Azure PowerShell

The following steps show how to create an Internet facing load balancer using Azure Resource Manager with PowerShell. With Azure Resource Manager, each resource is created and configured individually, then put together to create a resource.

To deploy a load balancer, you create and configure the following objects:

• Frontend IP configuration - contains public IP addresses for incoming network traffic.
• Backend address pool - contains network interfaces (NICs) for the virtual machines to receive network traffic from the load balancer.
• Load balancing rules - contains rules mapping a public port on the load balancer to port in the backend address pool.
• Inbound NAT rules - contains rules mapping a public port on the load balancer to a port for a specific virtual machine in the backend address pool.
• Probes - contains health probes used to check availability of virtual machines instances in the backend address pool.

For more information, see Azure Load Balancer components.

Set up PowerShell to use Resource Manager

Make sure you have the latest production version of the Azure Resource Manager module for PowerShell.

1. Sign into Azure

   Connect-AzAccount -Environment AzureChinaCloud
   

   Enter your credentials when prompted.

2. Check the subscriptions for the account

    Get-AzSubscription
   

3. Choose which of your Azure subscriptions to use.

   Select-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId 'GUID of subscription'
   

4. Create a resource group (skip this step if using an existing resource group)

   New-AzResourceGroup -Name NRP-RG -location "China East 2"
   

Create a virtual network and a public IP address for the frontend IP pool

1. Create a virtual network with a subnet.

   $backendSubnet = New-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name LB-Subnet-BE -AddressPrefix 10.0.2.0/24
   $vnet = New-AzvirtualNetwork -Name VNet -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Location 'China East 2' -AddressPrefix 10.0.0.0/16 -Subnet $backendSubnet
   

2. Create Azure Public IP address (PIP) resources for the frontend IP address pool. Be sure to change the value for -DomainNameLabel before running the following commands. The value must be unique within the Azure region.

   $publicIPv4 = New-AzPublicIpAddress -Name 'pub-ipv4' -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Location 'China East 2' -AllocationMethod Static -IpAddressVersion IPv4 -DomainNameLabel lbnrpipv4
   $publicIPv6 = New-AzPublicIpAddress -Name 'pub-ipv6' -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Location 'China East 2' -AllocationMethod Dynamic -IpAddressVersion IPv6 -DomainNameLabel lbnrpipv6
   

   Important

   The load balancer uses the domain label of the public IP as prefix for its FQDN. In this example, the FQDNs are lbnrpipv4.chinaeast2.chinacloudapp.cn and lbnrpipv6.chinaeast2.chinacloudapp.cn.

Create a Frontend IP configurations and a Backend Address Pool

1. Create frontend address configuration that uses the Public IP addresses you created.

   $FEIPConfigv4 = New-AzLoadBalancerFrontendIpConfig -Name "LB-Frontendv4" -PublicIpAddress $publicIPv4
   $FEIPConfigv6 = New-AzLoadBalancerFrontendIpConfig -Name "LB-Frontendv6" -PublicIpAddress $publicIPv6
   

2. Create backend address pools.

   $backendpoolipv4 = New-AzLoadBalancerBackendAddressPoolConfig -Name "BackendPoolIPv4"
   $backendpoolipv6 = New-AzLoadBalancerBackendAddressPoolConfig -Name "BackendPoolIPv6"
   

Create LB rules, NAT rules, a probe, and a load balancer

This example creates the following items:

• a NAT rule to translate all incoming traffic on port 443 to port 4443
• a load balancer rule to balance all incoming traffic on port 80 to port 80 on the addresses in the backend pool.
• a load balancer rule to allow RDP connection to the VMs on port 3389.
• a probe rule to check the health status on a page named HealthProbe.aspx or a service on port 8080
• a load balancer that uses all these objects

1. Create the NAT rules.

   $inboundNATRule1v4 = New-AzLoadBalancerInboundNatRuleConfig -Name "NicNatRulev4" -FrontendIpConfiguration $FEIPConfigv4 -Protocol TCP -FrontendPort 443 -BackendPort 4443
   $inboundNATRule1v6 = New-AzLoadBalancerInboundNatRuleConfig -Name "NicNatRulev6" -FrontendIpConfiguration $FEIPConfigv6 -Protocol TCP -FrontendPort 443 -BackendPort 4443
   

2. Create a health probe. There are two ways to configure a probe:

   HTTP probe

   $healthProbe = New-AzLoadBalancerProbeConfig -Name 'HealthProbe-v4v6' -RequestPath 'HealthProbe.aspx' -Protocol http -Port 80 -IntervalInSeconds 15 -ProbeCount 2
   

   or TCP probe

   $healthProbe = New-AzLoadBalancerProbeConfig -Name 'HealthProbe-v4v6' -Protocol Tcp -Port 8080 -IntervalInSeconds 15 -ProbeCount 2
   $RDPprobe = New-AzLoadBalancerProbeConfig -Name 'RDPprobe' -Protocol Tcp -Port 3389 -IntervalInSeconds 15 -ProbeCount 2
   

   For this example, we're going to use the TCP probes.

3. Create a load balancer rule.

   $lbrule1v4 = New-AzLoadBalancerRuleConfig -Name "HTTPv4" -FrontendIpConfiguration $FEIPConfigv4 -BackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv4 -Probe $healthProbe -Protocol Tcp -FrontendPort 80 -BackendPort 8080
   $lbrule1v6 = New-AzLoadBalancerRuleConfig -Name "HTTPv6" -FrontendIpConfiguration $FEIPConfigv6 -BackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv6 -Probe $healthProbe -Protocol Tcp -FrontendPort 80 -BackendPort 8080
   $RDPrule = New-AzLoadBalancerRuleConfig -Name "RDPrule" -FrontendIpConfiguration $FEIPConfigv4 -BackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv4 -Probe $RDPprobe -Protocol Tcp -FrontendPort 3389 -BackendPort 3389
   

4. Create the load balancer using the previously created objects.

   $NRPLB = New-AzLoadBalancer -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Name 'myNrpIPv6LB' -Location 'China East 2' -FrontendIpConfiguration $FEIPConfigv4,$FEIPConfigv6 -InboundNatRule $inboundNATRule1v6,$inboundNATRule1v4 -BackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv4,$backendpoolipv6 -Probe $healthProbe,$RDPprobe -LoadBalancingRule $lbrule1v4,$lbrule1v6,$RDPrule
   

Create NICs for the backend VMs

1. Get the Virtual Network and Virtual Network Subnet, where the NICs need to be created.

   $vnet = Get-AzVirtualNetwork -Name VNet -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG
   $backendSubnet = Get-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name LB-Subnet-BE -VirtualNetwork $vnet
   

2. Create IP configurations and NICs for the VMs.

   $nic1IPv4 = New-AzNetworkInterfaceIpConfig -Name "IPv4IPConfig" -PrivateIpAddressVersion "IPv4" -Subnet $backendSubnet -LoadBalancerBackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv4 -LoadBalancerInboundNatRule $inboundNATRule1v4
   $nic1IPv6 = New-AzNetworkInterfaceIpConfig -Name "IPv6IPConfig" -PrivateIpAddressVersion "IPv6" -LoadBalancerBackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv6 -LoadBalancerInboundNatRule $inboundNATRule1v6
   $nic1 = New-AzNetworkInterface -Name 'myNrpIPv6Nic0' -IpConfiguration $nic1IPv4,$nic1IPv6 -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Location 'China East 2'
   
   $nic2IPv4 = New-AzNetworkInterfaceIpConfig -Name "IPv4IPConfig" -PrivateIpAddressVersion "IPv4" -Subnet $backendSubnet -LoadBalancerBackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv4
   $nic2IPv6 = New-AzNetworkInterfaceIpConfig -Name "IPv6IPConfig" -PrivateIpAddressVersion "IPv6" -LoadBalancerBackendAddressPool $backendpoolipv6
   $nic2 = New-AzNetworkInterface -Name 'myNrpIPv6Nic1' -IpConfiguration $nic2IPv4,$nic2IPv6 -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Location 'China East 2'
   

Create virtual machines and assign the newly created NICs

For more information about creating a VM, see Create and preconfigure a Windows Virtual Machine with Resource Manager and Azure PowerShell

1. Create an Availability Set and Storage account

   New-AzAvailabilitySet -Name 'myNrpIPv6AvSet' -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -location 'China East 2'
   $availabilitySet = Get-AzAvailabilitySet -Name 'myNrpIPv6AvSet' -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG
   New-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Name 'mynrpipv6stacct' -Location 'China East 2' -SkuName "Standard_LRS"
   $CreatedStorageAccount = Get-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Name 'mynrpipv6stacct'
   

2. Create each VM and assign the previous created NICs

   $mySecureCredentials= Get-Credential -Message "Type the username and password of the local administrator account."
   
   $vm1 = New-AzVMConfig -VMName 'myNrpIPv6VM0' -VMSize 'Standard_G1' -AvailabilitySetId $availabilitySet.Id
   $vm1 = Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -VM $vm1 -Windows -ComputerName 'myNrpIPv6VM0' -Credential $mySecureCredentials -ProvisionVMAgent -EnableAutoUpdate
   $vm1 = Set-AzVMSourceImage -VM $vm1 -PublisherName MicrosoftWindowsServer -Offer WindowsServer -Skus 2012-R2-Datacenter -Version "latest"
   $vm1 = Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -VM $vm1 -Id $nic1.Id -Primary
   $osDisk1Uri = $CreatedStorageAccount.PrimaryEndpoints.Blob.ToString() + "vhds/myNrpIPv6VM0osdisk.vhd"
   $vm1 = Set-AzVMOSDisk -VM $vm1 -Name 'myNrpIPv6VM0osdisk' -VhdUri $osDisk1Uri -CreateOption FromImage
   New-AzVM -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Location 'China East 2' -VM $vm1
   
   $vm2 = New-AzVMConfig -VMName 'myNrpIPv6VM1' -VMSize 'Standard_G1' -AvailabilitySetId $availabilitySet.Id
   $vm2 = Set-AzVMOperatingSystem -VM $vm2 -Windows -ComputerName 'myNrpIPv6VM1' -Credential $mySecureCredentials -ProvisionVMAgent -EnableAutoUpdate
   $vm2 = Set-AzVMSourceImage -VM $vm2 -PublisherName MicrosoftWindowsServer -Offer WindowsServer -Skus 2012-R2-Datacenter -Version "latest"
   $vm2 = Add-AzVMNetworkInterface -VM $vm2 -Id $nic2.Id -Primary
   $osDisk2Uri = $CreatedStorageAccount.PrimaryEndpoints.Blob.ToString() + "vhds/myNrpIPv6VM1osdisk.vhd"
   $vm2 = Set-AzVMOSDisk -VM $vm2 -Name 'myNrpIPv6VM1osdisk' -VhdUri $osDisk2Uri -CreateOption FromImage
   New-AzVM -ResourceGroupName NRP-RG -Location 'China East 2' -VM $vm2