NSX ALB

Load Balancing With Avi Load Balancer in VMC on AWS-Part 2

Manish Jha

In the first post of this series, I discussed how Avi Controller & Service Engines are deployed in an SDDC running in VMC on AWS. 

In this post, I will walk through the steps of configuring load balancer settings for load balancing web servers.

Lab Setup

The below diagram is a pictorial representation of my lab setup.

Let’s jump into the lab and start configuring the load balancer. 

I have deployed a couple of web servers running on CentOS 7.

These are plain HTTP servers and a sample page deployed. 

Load Balancer Configuration

Create Session Persistence Profile

A persistence profile controls the settings that dictate how long a client will stay connected to one of the servers from a pool of load-balanced servers. Enabling a persistence profile ensures the client will reconnect to the same server every time, or at least for a desired duration of time. 

Cookie based persistence is the most commonly used mechanism when dealing with web applications.… Read More

Load Balancing With Avi Load Balancer in VMC on AWS-Part 1

Manish Jha

Load Balancers are an integral part of any datacenters and most of the enterprise applications are usually clustered for high availability and load distribution. Choice of the load balancer becomes very critical when applications are distributed across Datacenters/Cloud. 

This blog series is focused on demonstrating how can we leverage Avi Load Balancer (NSX ALB) for local/global load balancing for Enterprise applications in VMC on AWS. 

If you are new to Avi Load Balancer, then I will encourage you to learn about this product first. Here is the link to the official documentation for  Avi Load Balancer

Also, I have written few articles around this topic and you can read them from the below links:

1: Avi Load Balancer Architecture

2: Avi Controller Deployment & Configuration

3: Load Balancing Sample Application

The first 2 part of this blog series is focused on deployment & configuration of Avi LB in single SDDC for the local load balancing.… Read More

vSphere with Tanzu Leveraging NSX ALB-Part-1: Avi Controller Deployment & Configuration

Manish Jha

With the release of vSphere 7.0 U2, VMware introduced support of Avi Load Balancer (NSX Advanced Load Balancer) for vSphere with Tanzu, and thus fully supported load balancing is now enabled for Kubernetes. Prior to vSphere 7.0 U2, HA Proxy was the only supported load balancer when vSphere with Tanzu needed to be deployed on vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) based networking. 

HA Proxy was not supported for production-ready workloads as it has its own limitations. NSX ALB is a next-generation load balancing solution and its integration with vSphere with Tanzu, enables customers to run production workloads in the Kubernetes cluster.

When vSphere with Tanzu is enabled leveraging NSX ALB, ALB Controller VM has access to the Supervisor Cluster, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid clusters, and the applications/services that are deployed on top of TKG Cluster. 

The below diagram shows the high-level topology of NSX ALB & vSphere with Tanzu.

In this post, I will cover the steps of deploying & configuring NSX ALB for vSphere with Tanzu.… Read More

Getting Started With NSX ALB: Part-4-Load Balancer in Action

Manish Jha

In the last post of this series, I completed NSX-T integration with NSX ALB. Now it’s time to test the load balancer. 

If you have missed the earlier post of this series, you can read them from the below links:

1: NSX ALB Introduction & Architecture

2: Avi Controller Deployment & Configuration

3: NSX ALB Integration With NSX-T

Let’s get started.

Before I dive into the lab, let me first explain the topology that I have implemented in my lab.

  • I have two of my web servers sitting on the Web-LS logical segment backed by subnet 192.40.40.0/24.
  • Logical segments ALB-Mgmt-LS and ALB-Data-LS are connected to the same Tier-1 gateway to which Web-LS segment is connected and are backed by subnets 192.20.20.0/24 and 192.30.30.0/24.
  • Avi Service Engine VM’s are connected to both Mgmt & Data LS
  • All 3 segments are created in the overlay transport zone. 
  • My Tier-0 gateway is BGP peering with a physical router and my Win JB machine is able to ping the logical segments default gateway. 
… Read More

Getting Started With NSX ALB: Part-3-NSX-T Integration

Manish Jha

In the previous post of this series, I discussed Avi controller deployment and basic configuration. It’s time to integrate NSX-T with NSX ALB. High-level steps of NSX-T integration can be summarized as below:

  • Create a Content Library in vCenter
  • Deploy a Tier-1 gateway for Avi Management.
  • Create Logical Segments in NSX-T for Avi SE VM’s.
  • Create credentials for NSX-T and vCenter in Avi.
  • Register NSX-T with Avi Controller.
  • Create an IPAM profile. 

Let’s get started.

Create a Content Library in vCenter

Deployment of Avi Service Engine VM’s is done automatically by Avi Controller when we create Virtual Service. For this to work, an empty content library needs to be created in vCenter server as the controller pushes Avi SE ova into the content library and then deploys the SE VM’s. 

Deploy Tier-1 gateway for Avi Management

You can use the existing Tier-1 gateway or can deploy a new one (dedicated) for Avi management.… Read More

Getting Started With NSX ALB: Part-2- Avi Controller Deployment & Configuration

Manish Jha

The first post of this series talked about NSX ALB ad its architecture. Also, I discussed features that make NSX ALB unique. In this post, I will discuss deployment and basic configuration and later I will discuss ALB integration with NSX-T.

The official process of NSX ALB deployment is documented Here & cluster creation process Here

Hardware requirements for Avi Controllers and Service Engine VM’s are documented here

Prerequisites for NSX ALB Deployment:

  • vSphere is deployed and configured.
  • NSX-T Manager is deployed and is integrated with vCenter.T0-GW is deployed, and is paired with the physical Network using BGP.

NSX-ALB Controller OVA can be downloaded from https://customerportal.avinetworks.com

Ova deployment is straight forward and I am not covering the deployment wizard. Make sure to leave the Sysadmin login authentication key field blank when deploying controller ova. 

Once Controller VM boots up, connect to the web interface of the controller by typing https://<Avi-Controller-ip>/

Configure the controller administrator account by setting up password and email id (for password reset in case of account lockout)

Configure DNS and NTP server information.… Read More

Getting Started With NSX ALB: Part-1- Introduction & Architecture

Manish Jha

NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Formerly Avi Vantage) is a multi-cloud Software Defined Load Balancer which provides scalable application delivery across any infrastructure. NSX ALB is 100% software-defined and provides:

  • Multi-cloud: Consistent experience across on-premises and cloud environments through central management and orchestration.
  • Intelligence: Built-in analytics drive actionable insights that make autoscaling seamless, automation intelligent and decision making easy.
  • Automation: 100% RESTful APIs enable self-service provisioning and integration into the CI/CD pipeline for application delivery.

Note: NSX ALB solution came through VMware acquisition of Avi Networks in 2019.

Some of the key features of NSX ALB are:

  • Autoscaling of Load Balancers and Applications.
  • Web Application Analytics & Performance Insights.
  • Automation for IT, Self-Service for Developers.

To know more about these features, please visit Avi Networks website. 

NSX ALB Architecture

NSX-ALB Consists of two main components,

  • Avi Controller.
  • Service Engines (SE).

Controllers are deployed by platform administrator and Service Engines are automatically deployed by the controller when we create Virtual Services.… Read More