Here’s the
second and last part of the tutorial on how to configure the vCNS Edge to act as a
load balancer for your VMware vCloud implementation.
If you have no
idea how we came up to this point, go back and check part 1 of the serie.
Now that we already have the Edge implemented, let’s see how to configure it’s load balance services.
If you are not on the vCNS Admin Page
- On the Home
page of vCenter click on vShield
Icon
- Expand
the Folder Datacenters and select
the Datacenter where the vCNS Edge was deployed
- Select the Network Virtualization tab and
double-click on the Edge device we will configure the load balance services.
It will open up
the configuration screen for the device.
- Select the Load Balancer tab
- Enable the
Load Balancing service
- Click Publish Changes
Every change
will make on the configurations will show you this Publish Changes option, if
you do not publish them, it will not make effect.
- click the
plus sign to create a new load balancing pool
A load
balancing pool is the group of serves that will provide a common service, in
our case the vCloud Cells.
Since we have 2
distinct services on vCloud, HTTPS access and Console Proxy, it makes sense to
create controls to manage them separately, so we will create one pool for each
service.
The first pool
is for the HTTPS access or the Portal itself if you wish.
- Give the pool
a name, a description and click Next
- Select the services which will be available, for vCloud it’s 80 and 443 (HTTP and HTTPS) and
click Next
- Select the services which will be available, for vCloud it’s 80 and 443 (HTTP and HTTPS) and
click Next
- Enable the
services on port 80 and 443 and add the URI for monitoring of the Cell's health and click Next
Health HTTP URI
address: /cloud/server_status
The URI will
tell the load balancer if the cell is healthy and in case not, the cell will
stop directing connections to the failed cell.
It helps you
during maintenance periods, where you can stop one of the cells without
impacting the entirely cloud. The users will be redirected to the remaining and
healthy cell.
- Click the
plus sign to add the members of this pool
- Type the
IP of the cell and click OK
Since
we are creating the HTTPS pool, it’s IP must be the IP designed to provide
https services on the cell.
- Repeat the
procedure for adding each vCloud cell of your solution
- Once you
have your’s members added to the pool, click Next
- If everything is correct, Click Finish
Now we need
to create the pool for Consoly proxy, the procedure is ALMOST the same
- Select the Load Balancer tab click the plus sign
to create a new load balancing pool
- Give the pool
a name, a description and click Next
- Select TCP, select LEAST_CONN as a Balancing Method, make sure port is 443 and click Next
- Select TCP, select LEAST_CONN as a Balancing Method, make sure port is 443 and click Next
Despite
the fact the port is 443, ConsoleProxy is not a true HTTPs service it runs more
a TCP socket session on this port.
- Enable the
services on TCP port 443 and add the URI for the monitoring of the health of
the cell and click Next
Health
ConsoleProxy URI address: /sdk/vimServiceVersions.xml
- Add the
same members as we did for HTTP pool above.
Remember:
this time as we are creating a pool for ConsoleProxy service, add the IPs of
the cells designed to provide consoleproxy services
- Make sure
everything is right and click Finish
- Once your
pools are created click Publish Changes
Well, that’s only the first step, we just created the pools of servers, now we need to create Virtual Servers, most people knows it as the VIP address.
As we did with the pools, here we will create a VIP for HTTPS and another one for Console Proxy.
Let’s start
with the HTTP one.
- To create the Virtual Servers go to the Load Balancer tab, select Virtual Servers and click on the plus sign to create a new one.
- Give it a
Name; as a good practice something descriptive is always good
- type the
IP address of the HTTP VIP; it’s the IP resolving your cloud name not the
specific cells IPs.
- make sure
to pick up the Pool of services configure for HTTP
- Configure
the services the same as the screen bellow and click Add
Now let’s
create the console Proxy VIP.
- Click on the plus sign to create a new Virtual Server
- Give it a
Name
- type the
IP address of the ConsoleProxy VIP;
- make sure
to pick up the Pool of services configure for Console Proxy
- Configure
the services the same as the screen bellow and click Add
- Again,
click Publish Changes to make the
changes take effect
Not that
hard, right…. You can also use this procedure to create a load balance for any
service, not just vCloud.
