pfSense

I have been trying to setup load balancing for servers on my internal network, where the clients also live.

I have several services I would like to load balance internally which include
HTTP
HTTPS
DNS
LDAP

I have tried on numerous occasions to get this working (has never worked), by doing the following (as an example):

1) Create a Pool

• 192.168.1.10
• 192.168.1.11

2) Create a Virtual Server

• 192.168.1.9

3) Created an IP alias

• LBServers: 192.168.1.9,192.168.1.10,192.168.1.11

4) Create an outbound NAT rule for (NAT reflection)

• Source:192.168.0.0/16 SrcPort:tcp/udp/* Destination:LBServers DstPort:tcp/udp/* NAT Address: "Internal address" NAT Port: *

5) Created a firewall rule (even though I didn't think it was needed)

• Permit, Protocol:TCP/UDP, Source: *, SrcPort: *, Destination: LBServers, Port:443, GW: *

6) Enabled Enable NAT Reflection for 1:1 NAT

7) Enable automatic outbound NAT for Reflection

This seems like it should be a fairly simple thing to configure, but I understand that when NAT is being used and your passing through a FW for load balancing it complicates the configuration quite a bit.

If someone could make load balancing of internal hosts a little easier that would be awesome.

I would hope to see an check box in the "Edit Load Balancer - Virtual Server Entry" under "Services/Load Balancer/Virtual Servers" form to "Allow local network access" which would autogenerate any required NAT or FW rules and notify you if you do not have any other required settings configured if changing them could interfere with other services.

I really hope you consider this in a future release.

Thank you!