Add routes to a Datum Application Load Balancer with datumctl, split traffic across several weighted origins, and understand what the cloud portal does with the result.
A load balancer starts with one route: everything on / goes to the origin you gave it. This guide adds more.
Paths are prefix matches. /api catches /api, /api/v1 and everything below it. The most specific match wins, so / keeps serving everything else.To change where an existing route points:
The / route cannot be removed while other routes exist unless you pass --force, and the last remaining route cannot be removed at all.
route remove asks for confirmation when you run it in a terminal and assumes yes when you do not — in a pipeline or CI it proceeds. Use --dry-run first in automation.
Removing the last origin on a route is refused. Remove the route instead.Each URL origin is sent its own hostname as the Host header, so origins on different hostnames can share a route. A Host override on the route is the trap: it sends the same Host to every origin, so any origin that serves by hostname (Vercel, Netlify, Fly.io, Cloudflare Pages) answers the wrong site or a 404. It looks like it worked.A connector origin has to be the only origin in its route.
Weights are relative: origins at 1 and 3 get 25% and 75% of requests. An origin with no weight counts as 1. route backend list shows each origin’s WEIGHT and SHARE.
Without --weight, route backend add gives the new origin the average weight of the pool, so adding one beside two origins at 50 gives it 50 rather than 1. A pool where no origin has a weight stays that way.
route backend update --weight 0 drains an origin: it stays in the pool and gets no requests.
A change that would leave every origin on a route at weight 0 is refused, because the route would serve nothing.
route update keeps the weight, TLS hostname and filters of any origin that stays in the new list.
route list marks some routes advanced. Those use path matches, header matches or filters beyond what the plugin represents — it leaves them alone rather than risk rewriting them. Edit those with datumctl apply -f.Force HTTPS also appears in route list, marked system. It is a redirect rule with no origins behind it, and route remove will not delete it — use datumctl alb update my-app --no-force-https.
The portal manages one route: the pool of origins on /, with their weights, the load balancing algorithm and health checks. Those are the same fields datumctl alb writes, so you can change them from either.The portal has no way to show a second route, a path match or a per-origin filter. When a load balancer has any of them, the portal makes its Backends tab and origin settings read-only, so it never drops what it cannot show. Custom hostnames, traffic protection and basic authentication stay editable there.Manage a load balancer with more than one route with datumctl alb.
Last modified on October 23, 2026
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