VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (avi-networks)

Application Version and Upgrade Details

Introduction

VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (formerly AVI Networks) simplifies load balancing, web application firewall, and container ingress for any application across data centers and clouds.

• Multi-Cloud Consistency: Centralized policies ensure operational consistency and ease of administration.
• Pervasive Analytics: Gain valuable insights into application performance and security through comprehensive monitoring.
• Full Lifecycle Automation: Automate application delivery to free teams from manual tasks.
• Future Proof: Seamlessly extend application services to cloud-native and containerized applications.

NSX Advanced Load Balancer with Cloud Services offers multi-cloud load balancing, web application firewall, application analytics, and container services with SaaS-based operations. It can be deployed on-premises and in the cloud, consisting of three main components:

• Software Control Plane (NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller): Responsible for Service Engines placement, automation, analytics, and resiliency.
• Software Data Plane (NSX Advanced Load Balancer Service Engine): Provides local and global load balancing, application security, container ingress services, IPAM, and DNS functionality.
• Cloud Services (NSX Advanced Load Balancer Cloud Services): Offers SaaS capabilities to simplify operations and enhance security for workloads.

Key Use Cases

Discovery Use Cases

• It discovers VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer components like GSLB, Service Engine, AVI Cloud, Virtual Services and Pools.
• Publishes relationships between resources to have topological view and ease of maintenance.

Monitoring Use Cases

The device monitoring helps to collect the metric values with respect to time and sends alerts to the intended customer team to act up immediately in case of any threshold breach or unexpected metric behavior observed based on configurations. In a way it helps the customer with smooth functioning of business with minimal or zero downtime in case of any infrastructure related issues occurring.

Prerequisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
• OpsRamp NextGen Gateway 14.0.0 and above.
  Note: OpsRamp recommends using the latest Gateway version for full coverage of recent bug fixes, enhancements, etc.

Resource Hierarchy

VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer(AVI EndPoint)
       → GLSB
              → Virtual Service
                      → Pool
     → Service Engine
     → AVICloud

Default Monitoring Configurations

vmware-nsx-advanced-load-balancer has default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global metrics in OpsRamp. You can customize these default monitoring configurations as per your business use cases by cloning respective Global Templates and Global Device Management Policies. OpsRamp recommends performing the below activity before installing the application to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policies

   OpsRamp has a Global Device Management Policy for each Native Type of VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer. You can find those Device Management Policies at Setup > Resources > Device Management Policies, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex : vmware-nsx-advanced-load-balancer VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer - 1 (i.e, appName = vmware-nsx-advanced-load-balancer, nativeType =VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer, version = 1)

2. Default Global Templates

   OpsRamp has a Global Template for each Native Type of VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer. You can find these templates at Setup > Monitoring > Templates, search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: vmware-nsx-advanced-load-balancer VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Template - 1 (i.e, appName = vmware-nsx-advanced-load-balancer , nativeType = VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer, version = 1)

3. Default Global Monitors

   OpsRamp has a Global Monitors for each Native Type which has monitoring support. You can find those monitors at Setup > Monitoring > Monitors, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Monitor vmware-nsx-advanced-load-balancer VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer 1 (i.e, monitorKey = VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Monitor, appName = vmware-nsx-advanced-load-balancer , nativeType = VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer 1 , version= 1)

Configure and Install the VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Integration

1. From All Clients, select a client.
2. Go to Setup > Integrations and Apps.
3. The INSTALLED INTEGRATIONS page, where all the installed applications are displayed.
   Note: If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the ADD APP page.

4. Click + ADD on the INSTALLED INTEGRATIONS page. The AVAILABLE INTEGRATIONS AND APPS page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.

5. Click ADD in the VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer application.
6. In the Configurations page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
7. Enter the below mentioned BASIC INFORMATION:

Notes:

• By default the Is Secure checkbox is selected.
• AVI EndPoint IP Address/Host Name and Port should be accessible from Gateway.
• API Timeouts: These are the maximum API Timeouts that the application can use to connect and get responses from the end device.
  • Connection Timeout in Secs: a time period in which a client should establish a connection with a server.
    Note: By default, 60 is selected.
  • Connection Request Timeout in Secs: a time period required to process an HTTP call: from sending a request to receiving a response.
    Note: By default, 60 is selected.
  • Socket Timeout in Secs: a maximum time of inactivity between two data packets when exchanging data with a server.
    Note: By default, 60 is selected.
• AppFailure Notification Alerts: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure that is, Connectivity Exception, Authentication Exception.

8. Select the below mentioned Custom Attribute:

Note: The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the integration. You can add a maximum of five custom attributes (key and value pair).

9. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:
   • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
   • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.
10. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:
    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly
11. Click ADD.

Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it. From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration.

12. Click Next.
13. Below are the optional steps you can perform on the Installation page.

• Under the ADVANCED SETTINGS, Select the Bypass Resource Reconciliation option, if you wish to bypass resource reconciliation when encountering the same resources discovered by multiple applications.
  Note: If two different applications provide identical discovery attributes, two separate resources will be generated with those respective attributes from the individual discoveries.

• Click +ADD to create a new collector by providing a name or use the pre-populated name.

14. Select an existing registered profile.

15. Click FINISH.

The integration is installed and displayed on the INSTALLED INTEGRATION page. Use the search field to find the installed integration.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select the VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer application.

View the VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer details

The VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer integration is displayed in the Infrastructure > Resources > Cluster. You can navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details and Metrics tab to view the metric details for VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer.

Resource Filter Input Keys

VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer app resources are filtered and discovered based on below keys:

Supported Alert Custom Macros

Customize the alert subject and description with below macros then it will generate alert based on customisation. Supported macros keys:

Supported Metrics

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure notifications for below two cases when user enables App Failure Notifications in configuration:
  • Connectivity Exception.
  • Authentication Exception.
• Application will not send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification until the already existing critical alert is recovered.
• Using metrics for monitoring the resources and generating alerts when the threshold values are breached.
• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts.
• vmwarensx_loadbalancer_APIStatistics, by default this metric is not enabled if a customer wants to monitor the number of calls that app is making with the target device, then only we can apply this metric to the device.
• Supported X-Avi-Version is 21.1.3.
• This application supports both Classic Gateway and NextGen Gateway.
• No support of showing activity log and applied time.