前幾天跟 AWS 的人開會的時候得知 ALB 的 beta program，今天就看到正式公開的消息了：「New – AWS Application Load Balancer」。
最主要的是對 WebSockets 與 HTTP/2 的支援，這個需求都喊很久了：
WebSocket allows you to set up long-standing TCP connections between your client and your server. This is a more efficient alternative to the old-school method which involved HTTP connections that were held open with a “heartbeat” for very long periods of time. WebSocket is great for mobile devices and can be used to deliver stock quotes, sports scores, and other dynamic data while minimizing power consumption. ALB provides native support for WebSocket via the ws:// and wss:// protocols.
HTTP/2 is a significant enhancement of the original HTTP 1.1 protocol. The newer protocol feature supports multiplexed requests across a single connection. This reduces network traffic, as does the binary nature of the protocol.
另外是 url routing，不過目前看起來只能設 10 條，我猜可以問問能不能加吧：
An Application Load Balancer has access to HTTP headers and allows you to route requests to different backend services accordingly. For example, you might want to send requests that include /api in the URL path to one group of servers (we call these target groups) and requests that include /mobile to another. Routing requests in this fashion allows you to build applications that are composed of multiple microservices that can run and be scaled independently.
As you will see in a moment, each Application Load Balancer allows you to define up to 10 URL-based rules to route requests to target groups. Over time, we plan to give you access to other routing methods.
再來是改善了之前抱怨很多的 health check：
Application Load Balancers can perform and report on health checks on a per-port basis. The health checks can specify a range of acceptable HTTP responses, and are accompanied by detailed error codes.
改進了不少東西...