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NSX ALB (Advanced Load Balancer) Design

December 6, 2021 Chris Noon 0

I wrote three (3) blogs on Avi Load Balancing, now rebranded as VMware NSX ALB (Advanced Load Balancer). These were around the basic concepts, base configuration, and that configuration using API. https://vmusketeers.com/2020/05/09/avi-networks-the-advanced-nsx-load-balancer/ https://vmusketeers.com/2020/05/24/avi-networks-base-configuration/ https://vmusketeers.com/2020/06/19/avi-network-base-configuration-via-api/ I noticed it was difficult to find a single post that discusses the different types of design solutions. In this post, I want to discuss the design decisions when deploying an ALB solution and expand on my previous blogs. Management Components The management components in the ALB solution are the controllers. The controllers are what the users interact with that which pushes instructions to the data plane components. They can be deployed in one (1) of two (2) ways: Single Controller: A single controller is deployed […]

Avi Network: Base Configuration via API

June 19, 2020 Chris Noon 3

API Reference. I wrote a post a few weeks back on how to get an Avi proof of concept up and running. Hopefully, it helped and continues to help others wanting to start playing with Avi. I like to spin my lab up and down, pushing config when needed. This post will be focused around the Avi APIs and how to stand up the basic configuration previously discussed. I used the Avi API guide for reference:https://avinetworks.com/docs/latest/ Alternatively, you can navigate to:https://[Avi Controller IP]/api At this stage, I will assume at least 1 or 3 Controller(s) has been deployed, a logical cloud has been created along with the relevant networks for Avi consumption. Disclaimer. I will be providing the bare minimum […]

Avi Networks: Base Configuration

May 24, 2020 Chris Noon 1

Load Balancing. I covered Avi Networks at a high level in my first post. I now want to dive into the base configuration of Avi and at its core, it is a Load Balancer. Saying that there are a few flavours of Load Balancing. Layer 4 Load Balancing. – Focusing on the IP address and TCP port.Layer 7 Load Balancing. – Focusing on layer 7 attributes such as HTTP headers.Global Server Load Balancing. – Adopting the layer 4 and layer 7 concepts to balance applications across geographical regions. While running through the base configuration I will be focusing on layer 4. While layer 7 and GSLB is something I eventually want to play with it will be further down the […]

Avi Networks: The Advanced NSX Load Balancer.

May 9, 2020 Chris Noon 2

What is Avi? Avi Networks provides software-defined Load Balancing at its core. Complementing the core service is a plethora of mouthwatering services and features. Surely the reason Avi was acquired by VMware on July 11th 2019. Rebranded as the NSX Advanced Load Balancer. Some of the features include application analytics, predictive autoscaling, micro-segmentation and WAF (Web Application Firewall) all this and on both cloud and on-prem. The Load Balancer for any platform! After reading this, if you like the look of Avi and want a demo or PoC, reach out to the team at https://avinetworks.com/. The components. Avi builds its components in a similar way to other VMware products. A management, control and data plane. The logical separation of components […]

F5 p2v Migration

April 20, 2020 Chris Noon 0

Physical to Virtual migrations are old hat. Everyone’s done them and are now focusing on cool technologies such as Containers and Kubernetes. That said, there’s still tones of physical Networking equipment out there that can and arguably should be virtualised. I worked on an F5 project and thought the physical devices could and should be moved to virtual devices. Why Migrate? There are a number of benefits to virtualizing Network equipment: – Reduction in support costs as there is no need for RMA. – No software or hardware dependencies regarding EOL (end of life) or EOD (End of Development). – VMs are protected by virtualisation HA standards. The project in question had 4 physical F5’s which were becoming EOL/EOD and […]