How to monitor Load Balancer in DigitalOcean
By continuously tracking metrics like connection counts, request throughput, and error rates, you can identify uneven load distribution, backend failures, or scaling issues before they impact user experience.
Effective monitoring ensures smooth fail-overs, validates performance, and allows proactive tuning of routing rules. This results in robust, secure, and responsive application delivery across distributed environments.
Use case
CPU stability: Prevent performance drops by monitoring CPU usage and I/O wait times. This helps identify compute, I/O, or contention issues early on.
Memory management: Track available memory to prevent crashes, enabling early detection of leaks before essential processes are terminated.
Network insight: Optimize throughput by tracking bandwidth usage across interfaces, helping detect traffic spikes and unexpected data usage.
Setup and configuration
Load Balancer resources are auto-discovered and monitored during the DigitalOcean integration. To enable monitoring, follow the steps below:
- Navigate to Cloud > DigitalOcean > Add DigitalOcean Monitor. Follow the steps to add a DigitalOcean monitor.
- While adding or editing a DigitalOcean monitor, select Load Balancer from the Service/Resource Types drop-down and click Save.
- Go to Cloud > DigitalOcean, select the created DigitalOcean monitor, and then click Load Balancer.
Load Balancers will be discovered during the next discovery cycle in accordance with the frequency selected during the DigitalOcean monitor creation.
Data collection frequency
Based on the selected poll interval, performance metrics of your DigitalOcean Load Balancer will be collected every two minutes and updated in the Site24x7 portal every five minutes by default.
Supported metrics
| Metric name | Description | Units |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend Connections Current | Number of active connections currently open on the load balancer frontend. | Count |
| Frontend Connections Limit | Maximum number of simultaneous connections allowed on the load balancer frontend. | Count |
| Frontend TLS Connections Current | Number of active TLS-encrypted connections currently established on the frontend. | Count |
| Frontend TLS Connections Limit | Maximum number of concurrent TLS connections permitted on the frontend. | Count |
| Frontend TLS Connections Exceeding Rate Limit | Number of TLS connections being throttled because they exceed the configured rate limit. | Count |
| Frontend CPU Utilization | Percentage of CPU consumed by the load balancer frontend process. | Percentage |
| Frontend HTTP Requests Per Second | Rate of HTTP requests being received and processed by the frontend per second. | Count/second |
| Frontend HTTP Responses | Total count of HTTP responses sent from the frontend to clients. | Count |
| Frontend Network Throughput HTTP | Volume of HTTP traffic flowing through the load balancer frontend per second. | Bit/second |
| Frontend Network Throughput TCP | Volume of TCP traffic flowing through the load balancer frontend per second. | Bit/second |
| Frontend Network Throughput UDP | Volume of UDP traffic flowing through the load balancer frontend per second. | Bit/second |
| Frontend NLB TCP Network Throughput | TCP network throughput on the Network Load Balancer (NLB) frontend. | Bit/second |
| Frontend NLB UDP Network Throughput | UDP network throughput on the Network Load Balancer (NLB) frontend. | Bit/second |
| Frontend Firewall Dropped Packets | Number of packets dropped by the load balancer's integrated firewall rules. | Count |
| Frontend Firewall Dropped Bytes | Volume of data dropped by the load balancer's integrated firewall rules. | Byte |
| Droplets Connections | Number of active connections currently open between the load balancer and backend Droplets. | Count |
| Droplets Health Checks | Number of health checks performed against backend Droplets during the monitoring interval. | Count |
| Droplets HTTP Responses | Total count of HTTP responses received from backend Droplets by the load balancer. | Count |
| Droplets HTTP Response Time Avg | Average time taken by backend Droplets to respond to the HTTP requests. | Second |
| Droplets HTTP Session Duration Avg | Average duration of HTTP sessions between the load balancer and backend Droplets. | Second |
| Droplets Queue Size | Number of requests currently queued waiting for an available backend Droplet connection. | Count |
Threshold configuration
You can configure thresholds and alerts for all the Load Balancer metrics to detect performance degradation proactively or connection issues.
- Go to Admin > Configuration Profiles > Threshold and Availability.
- Create or edit your Threshold Profile for Load Balancer.
- Assign the profile to the respective monitors to trigger alerts.
IT Automation
Use Site24x7's IT Automation to resolve common issues with Load Balancer performance automatically:
- Go to Admin > IT Automation Templates. Then, click Add Automation Templates.
- Create an automation rule by selecting the automation Type (e.g., Server reboot, clear queue).
- Map the created rules to the Load Balancer, for automatic execution during alerts.
Configuration rules
Use Configuration Rules to simplify bulk setup across Load Balancer instances. Automatically assign Threshold Profiles, Notification Profiles, Tags, and Monitor Groups when new monitors are discovered.