Docker Networking Cookbook

Exposing services through a load balancer

Another way to isolate your containers is to frontend them with a load balancer. This mode of operation offers several advantages. First, the load balancer can provide intelligent load balancing to multiple backend nodes. If a container dies, the load balancer can remove it from the load balancing pool. Second, you're effectively hiding your containers behind a load balancing Virtual IP (VIP) address. Clients believe that they are interacting directly with the application running in the container while they are actually interacting with the load balancer. In many cases, a load balancer can provide or offload security features, such as SSL and web application firewall that make scaling a container-based ...