Configuring load balancing

Kubernetes provides a framework to plug in an external load balancer. The plug-in can be a Layer 4 or Layer 7 load balancer. The load balancer works with the horizontal auto-scaling and high-availability features of Kubernetes. CICS TX has an inbuilt Layer 7 load balancer.

The CICS TX load balancer balances the transactional load across dynamically-varying pod replicas. This ensures maximum TPS throughput (Transactions per Second) and reduces the possibility of abends when a pod or CICS region on a pod is overloaded.

The load balancer can be configured through environment variables or sections in the operator of the sample CICS TX image then deployed to regions that are configured on pod replicas.

In addition, CICS TX can integrate with a Layer 4 load balancer to route incoming work between front-end pods. For more information, see Multi-level load balancing.