Pools
Overview
A Cloudflare Load Balancing pool represents a group of origin servers, each identified by their IP address or hostname. You can configure multiple pools, as well as failover priority (Pool A-> Pool B-> Pool C). If you're familiar with DNS terminology, think of a pool as a “record set,” except we only return addresses that are considered healthy. You can attach health checks to individual pools to tailor monitoring for collections of origin servers.
Important notes
When working with pools, note the following:
When adding origin servers to a pool, you can identify the origin by hostname or IP address.
The order of pools in the load balancer determines the standard failover priority. When the number of healthy origins in a pool drops below the configured threshold, Load Balancing routes traffic to the next available pool.
By default, pools are ordered by date created. You can reorder them from the Load Balancing dashboard and via Cloudflare API (use the Update Pools command to set a new origins array).
Dynamic Steering uses Round Trip Time (RTT) profiles to determine pool priority. If there is no RTT data for a pool in a region or colocation center, Load Balancing will use pool order to determine failover priority.
Geo Steering directs traffic to pools based on the client’s region or point of presence. If there is no Geo Steering configuration for a region or pool, the load balancer will use pool order to determine failover priority.
Properties
Cloudflare Pool objects have the following properties:
| Name / type | Description / example | Constraints |
|---|---|---|
| check_regionsarraynull | A list of regions from which to run health checks. Null means every Cloudflare data center.["WEU","ENAM"] | |
| created_onstring (date-time) | Creation time"2014-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z" | Read only |
| descriptionstring | A human-readable description of the pool"This pool is for example.com" | |
| enabledboolean | Set to true to enable the pool; false, to disable.Disabled pools will not receive traffic and are excluded from health checks. Disabling a pool will cause any load balancers associated with the pool to failover to the next pool (if any).true | Default value: trueValid values: true, false |
| idstring | API item identifier tag for the pool"17b5962d775c646f3f9725cbc7a53df4" | Max. length: 32 bytesRead only |
| minimum_originsinteger | The minimum number of origins that must be healthy for this pool to serve traffic. If the number of healthy origins falls below this number, the pool will be marked unhealthy and the load balancer will failover to the next available pool.2 | |
| modified_onstring (date-time) | Last modification time"2014-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z" | Read only |
| monitorstring | The ID of the monitor to use for health checking origins within this pool"f1aba936b94213e5b8dca0c0dbf1f9cc" | Max. length: 32 bytesRead only |
| namestring | A short name (tag) for the pool. Only alphanumeric characters, hyphens and underscores are allowed."primary-dc-1" | |
| notification_emailstring | The email address to which health status notifications are sent. This can be an individual mailbox or a mailing list."someone@example.com" | |
| originsarray | The list of origins within this pool. Traffic directed at this pool is balanced across all currently healthy origins, provided the pool itself is healthy.[{"name": "app-server-1","address": "0.0.0.0","enabled": true,"weight": 0.56}] |
Managing pools via the Cloudflare API
Endpoints
Pool endpoints are available in the Cloudflare API at both the user and account level, respectively:
user/load_balancers/poolsaccounts/:account_identifier/load_balancers/pools
Commands
The Cloudflare API supports the following commands. For more detail, see Cloudflare API: Load Balancer Pools.
| Command | Method | Endpoint |
|---|---|---|
| Create Pool | POST | user/load_balancers/pools |
| Delete Pool | DELETE | user/load_balancers/pools/:identifier |
| List Pools | GET | user/load_balancers/pools |
| Pool Details | GET | user/load_balancers/pools/:identifier |
| Pool Health Details | GET | user/load_balancers/pools/:identifier/health |
| Update Pool | PUT | user/load_balancers/pools/:identifier |