Overview

Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) is the method of load balancing applications/workloads that are distributed globally (typically, multiple data centers and public clouds). GSLB enables efficient distribution of traffic across application servers that are dispersed geographically. 

In a production environment, the corporate name server delegates one or more subdomains to NSX ALB GSLB, which then owns these domains, and provides responses to DNS queries from clients. DNS based load balancing is implemented by creating DNS Virtual Service. 

How GSLB Works?

Let’s understand the working of GSLB using the below example. 

There are 2 SDDC’s running in VMC and both the SDDC has local load balancing configured to load balance set of web servers in their respective SDDC. The 2 Virtual Services (SDDC01-Web-VS & SDDC02-Web-VS) have a couple of web servers as pool members and the VIP of the Virtual Service is translating to Public IP via NAT.  

Let’s assume the 4 web servers running across 2 SDDC are servicing the same web application and you are looking for doing a global load balancing along with local load balancing. … Read More

VMC on AWS is an easy way to consume VMware SDDC on the go. Spinning up infrastructure was never been so easy.

NSX-T is one of the critical pieces of the SDDC and equips customers to use core networking features such as

• Routing/Switching (North-South & East-West).
• Firewall (Gateway & Distributed).
• VPN (Policy & Route Based)
• Load Balancer (Edge Based)

Applications are becoming complex day by day. High availability and load balancing are a must for these complex applications.

Although NSX-T Edge based load balancer is pretty good, but it doesn’t offer the next generation load balancer features. There were competitors like F5 and Netscaler in the market who were providing advanced load balancing features with their products. VMware stepped into the next-gen load balancer arena via the acquisition of Avi Networks who were doing great work in this field. Avi Networks has been rebranded to NSX Advanced Load Balancer now. 

Avi Load Balancer (NSX ALB) integration with VMC on AWS is fully supported now. In… Read More

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 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