Attach VMs

A load balancer routes to backends — each one a service, ip, or hostname target. To balance traffic across your virtual machines, add each VM as a backend using its IP address.

Before you begin

Two or more running VMs in the same workspace serving the same application (Create a VM)
The application listening on the same port on every VM
A health endpoint on each VM (e.g. /health) so failed instances are removed automatically

Add VMs as backends

Collect the VM addresses

Open each VM’s detail page and note its IP address. Prefer private IPs when the VMs and load balancer share a network — traffic stays internal.

Add a backend row per VM

In the load balancer create form, add one row per VM:

Field	Value
Type	IP address — or Hostname if you address VMs by DNS name
Target	The VM’s IP address, e.g. `10.8.0.12`
Port	The port your application listens on
Weight	`100` for an equal split — adjust to shift traffic
Encrypt traffic from the load balancer to this backend	Tick only if the VM serves TLS on that port

Verify distribution

After creation, open the detail page — the Backends section lists every VM with its type, target, port, weight, and TLS setting. Send a few requests to the public endpoint and confirm they spread across VMs (watch your application logs, or include the hostname in a test response).

Scaling the pool

Unhealthy VMs are removed from rotation automatically by health checks — you don’t need to remove a VM that’s temporarily down, and a VM you stop for maintenance drops out once it fails its checks.

The backend list cannot be edited after creation. To add or remove VMs permanently, or to change weights, delete the load balancer and create a new one with the updated backends, then point your clients or DNS at the new endpoint.