Should we switch to standard SKU load balancers in Azure?

[rfranzke]

We are using basic SKU load balancers for our Shoots in Azure, however, Azure supports also standard SKU load balancers which provide more features: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-balancer/load-balancer-standard-overview

Should we switch to them?

Hint: To use this feature in Kubernetes we require version 1.11 for the Seed clusters, and must set {"loadBalancerSku": "standard"} in the Azure cloud provider config. See kubernetes/kubernetes#61884 and kubernetes/kubernetes#62707.

[rfranzke]

@dkistner any recommendation?

[rfranzke]

@bergerx @luisdavim do you have some experience with standard SKU LBs in Azure?

[rfranzke]

any advice here?

[marwinski]

Just one note: Azure support suggested to use standard SKU load balancers. Not sure whether there will be a real benefit.

[vlerenc]

@dkistner WDYT?

[dkistner]

Hard to say. The good thing with the basic sku lbs is that they are free of charge.

On the hand side the basic sku lbs allow only 100 machines in their backend pools (standard 1000 machines). The basics do also not support Azure AZs. Update operations (e.g. add a lb rule or attach an ip) should faster then < 30 sec (basics 60-90sec). This could speed up loadbalancer service provisining times.

The SLA is also interesting. The basics have no dedicated SLA and rely completely on the machine SLAs. The standard ones have an SLA: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/load-balancer/v1_0/

So long term I see a need for standard sku lbs, because otherwise we can't support clusters with more 100 nodes on Azure.

[vlerenc]

Then it looks as if we should do that. At least, you only list advantages (modulo the price of course). Since the goal of the people are mature clusters, it seems reasonable to integrate them.

[vlerenc]

@zanetworker proposed to do that also because of the current and ongoing Azure connectivity issues. He also offered to do that soon.

[dkistner]

Ok thanks @zanetworker for taking over :)