Note:
- This tutorial requires access to Oracle Cloud. To sign up for a free account, see Get started with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Free Tier.
- It uses example values for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure credentials, tenancy, and compartments. When completing your lab, substitute these values with ones specific to your cloud environment.
Deploy VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC
Introduction
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution allows customers to build VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) stack on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). With this, customers can easily migrate VMware workloads to the public cloud without refactoring application workloads or toolsets. This enables VMware workloads to access public cloud services and benefits from the scale and agility offered by public cloud infrastructure.
VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (formerly known as Avi Networks) is a self-service multi-cloud application services platform that ensures consistent application delivery, bringing software load balancers, Web Application Firewall (WAF), and container ingress for applications across data centers and clouds.
VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (NSX ALB) helps administrators to manage load balancing requirements on VMware and cloud platforms. It offers enterprise automation, elastic scale, agility, flexibility, speed, and cost effectiveness.
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution NSX ALB series will cover the deployment and integration of functionalities (virtual service, Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) and so on) on Oracle Cloud VMWare Solution.
This is the first tutorial which describes how to deploy and configure VMware NSX ALB (Avi) controllers as a cluster on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC).
Note:
- This series on the NSX Advanced Load Balancer aims to provide an example of its deployment. It should be regarded as a reference guide, allowing customers to tailor the deployment and design to meet their specific needs.
- The deployment model and methodology may vary. This tutorial should not be viewed as the definitive source for deployment practices. Rather, it serves to demonstrate how NSX ALB can be deployed and configured for reference purposes.
- As previously stated, customers are encouraged to deploy NSX ALB according to their unique requirements.
Objective
- Administrators will be able to deploy and configure VMware NSX ALB and connect to it.
Task 1: Create NSX-T Overlay Segment
We need to deploy three NSX ALB (Avi) controllers and they will have a virtual IP (VIP) associated with them. In the next tutorial, we will deploy Service Engines which also requires management IP addresses. We will create a dedicated NSX-T overlay segment which will be used to host management addresses for the components. As the environment will grow we will require management IP’s.
-
Log in to the Oracle Cloud VMWare Solution NSX-T portal, navigate to Networking and Segments. Under NSX tab, click Add Segment.
-
Enter the Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) details and click SAVE to save the configuration.
Note: Do not enable DHCP on it.
Task 2: Enable the Communication to and from the Overlay Segment
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC management virtual machines (VM’s) that is vCenter and NSX-T Manager need to communicate with the NSX ALB (Avi) controllers. For more information about detailed steps on how to establish communication from NSX-T overlay segment to Oracle Cloud VMware Solution management VM’s, see Enable DNS resolution for Oracle Cloud VMware Solution Management VMs and ESXi Host from NSX-T Overlay Segment.
Once the connectivity has been set up, we should be able to reach the default gateway of the overlay segment from Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC vCenter and from NSX-T.
On the overlay segment, we have deployed a test machine to verify the connectivity is working well.
Task 3: Create Domain Name System (DNS) entries for the NSX ALB (Avi) Controllers
We need to deploy three NSX ALB (Avi) controllers. They will be part of a cluster and will be accessible over a virtual IP. Let’s create four DNS entries on OCI VCN DNS.
-
Log in to the OCI Console, navigate to Networking, Virtual Cloud Networks and click the VCN.
-
Click DNS Resolver, Associated private view and the VCN. if the VCN is not present, then click Manage private views, select the VCN and click Save.
-
Under Zone name, click OCVS SDDC domain. It is region specific. In this tutorial, it is
sddc.fra.oci.oraclecloud.com
. -
We should see all the existing A Records which have been created during Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC provisioning. We need to create the records here.
-
Click Manage records and Add record. Enter the DNS Name for the first controller. In this tutorial, we are naming it as
avi-controller-01
. Enter the following details and click Add record. -
Repeat steps 1 to 5 and create all the DNS A Records. Three DNS records for NSX ALB (Avi) controller and the last one for the virtual IP. After creating the records, click Publish changes.
-
To confirm the changes, click Confirm publish changes.
Task 4: Deploy the NSX ALB (Avi) Controllers
-
Log in to the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution vCenter portal, right-click on the cluster and click Deploy OVF Template. Select the NSX ALB (Avi) controller Open Virtual Appliance (
ova
) file and click Next. -
Enter the name for the VM followed by the cluster to be deployed on. Review the
ova
details and accept the self-signed certificate. -
Select the datastore, followed by overlay segment
avi-mgmt
for network connectivity. Enter the IP address, Subnet Mask, Default Gatweway, Hostname and click Finish.Power on the VM once the import is successful.
-
Repeat steps 1 to 3 and deploy the remaining two NSX ALB (Avi) controller.
Task 5: Configure the NSX ALB (Avi) Controllers
We now need to configure the controllers and assign virtual IP to them.
-
Access the first NSX ALB (Avi) controller via browser, enter the password (we can specify any password) and click CREATE ACCOUNT.
-
Enter the Passphrase, DNS Resolver, DNS Search Domain and click NEXT.
-
Enter Email/SMTP details and click NEXT.
-
Keep the default options for Multi-Tenant. Select Setup Cloud After and click SAVE.
-
In this tutorial, we are using a trial evaluation license. Navigate to Administration Licensing and click the settings icon. Select the licensing edition to Enterprise Tier, enter the license key and click Save.
Note: Enterprise license is only supported for NSX ALB (Avi) controller on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC.
-
Under the Administration tab, click Controller and Nodes. Under the cluster node, click EDIT and update the hostname for the controller (
avi-controller-01
). The controller will initialize and will be back to ready state in few minutes. -
Repeat steps 1 to 6 for the other remaining controllers, that is
avi-controller-02
andavi-controller-03
. -
Log in to any controller, click Administration, Controller tab and click Nodes link. Click the edit link.
-
Enter the NSX ALB (Avi) controller, cluster VIP details and click Save. It will take few minutes and the cluster status will be back to available or green state.
-
If the Cluster IP is in grey state, then change the virtual IP to another IP temporarily (In this tutorial, we changed the IP to
172.28.10.10
) and revert to the original IP. This should bring virtual IP to green available state.
-
NSX ALB (Avi) controller is now accessible over virtual IP and the set up is in available or green state. NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi) controllers have been deployed and configured as a cluster.
Next Steps
To configure VMware NSX ALB (Avi) controller and create additional NSX-T overlay segments on the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), see Tutorial 2: Configure VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution.
Acknowledgments
- Author - Vaibhav Tiwari (Cloud VMware Solutions Specialist)
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Deploy VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC
F93334-01
February 2024
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