Discover the latest improvements in ZoneHero 2025.2, featuring UDP load balancing capabilities, Envoy proxy upgrade, and optimized performance for persistent connections.

We’re pleased to announce the release of ZoneHero 2025.2, bringing significant enhancements to our load balancing platform. This release focuses on expanding protocol support, improving underlying infrastructure, and optimizing performance for persistent connections.

🆕 What’s New in 2025.2

UDP Load Balancing Support

ZoneHero now supports UDP load balancing, expanding beyond HTTP/HTTPS to handle a broader range of applications:

• Gaming applications with real-time UDP traffic
• DNS services and other UDP-based protocols
• IoT and streaming applications requiring low-latency UDP connections
• Custom UDP protocols with flexible routing configurations

This enhancement allows you to consolidate more of your load balancing infrastructure under ZoneHero’s cost optimization engine.

Envoy Proxy Upgrade to v1.34

We’ve upgraded our underlying Envoy proxy to version 1.34.4 from 1.32.9 (minor revisions are always applied regardless of ZoneHero HLB releases)

• Enhanced security with the latest CVE fixes and security patches
• Improved compatibility with modern compilers as envoy progressed towards C++20, a few of our custom patches to build envoy with modern clang were made obsolete! Looking forward to the 1.35 release for full upstream C++20 support!
• WASM improvements while not exposed to customers yet, we’re working on new capabilities making use of WASM modules.

Optimized Load Distribution for Long Keepalive Connections

Our load balancing algorithm now handles long-lived connections more intelligently:

• Improved fairness in distributing new connections when existing ones are long-running
• Better resource utilization across load balancer nodes
• Reduced connection imbalance for applications with persistent connections

🔧 Technical Details

UDP Load Balancing Configuration

Configure UDP load balancing through our standard configuration methods: you can now use UDP as an additional protocol for hlb_listener_attachment

# Terraform example
resource "hlb_listener_attachment" "udp_lb" {
  load_balancer_id = hlb_load_balancer.web.id
  port             = 7777
  protocol         = "UDP"
  target_group_arn = var.target_group_arn
}

🚀 Getting Started

This new release comes with no breaking changes and all users will be upgraded to the new version requiring no action on their part.

To start using the new UDP load balancing features, you must upgrade the Terraform provider to the latest version: v1.2.0.

🎯 What’s Coming Next

We’re already working on the next release, which will include:

• Edge computing capabilities thanks to WASM modules
• Source IP preservation for UDP flows
• More monitoring options beyond AWS CloudWatch

Have questions about ZoneHero 2025.2? Check our documentation or contact our Support Team for assistance with the new features.