System Requirements

VMware Ecosystems

The following are the VMware vCenter versions supported by the Avi Load Balancer:


Avi Load Balancer Controller Version	Virtual Hardware Version
17.2.x	10.0
18.1.x	10.0
20.1.1 to 20.1.5	10.0
20.1.6	11.0
21.1.x	11.0
22.1.x	11.0

Note:

When upgrading across releases having different virtual hardware versions, the existing SEs which are created with previous virtual hardware versions, will continue to work. However, new SEs are spawned with the updated virtual hardware version.

The Avi Load Balancer only works with the following switches in a vCenter Cloud:

Standard Virtual Switch (vSwitch)
Distributed Virtual Switch (vDS)

Also, the deployment of the Controller and SE OVA directly on an ESX host (for a no-access or other cloud-connector types) is not supported. They must be deployed using the vCenter UI, as the deployment requires Open Virtualization Format (OVF) properties to be configured.

As Avi Load Balancer deployment is supported from ESX version 6.0 and above, it is recommended to use VMware Hardware version 11. For more details, see https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2007240.

As the VMware Hardware version 11 is supported for every ESX version above 6, Avi Load Balancer Service Engine virtual machine is programmed with VMware Hardware version 11. Upgrading the Hardware version manually is not recommended.

VMXNET3 network adapter is required for SE to operate in DPDK mode in VMware.

VMware NSX-T Interoperability Matrix

For VMware NSX-T Interoperability details, see Product Interoperability Matrix.

Jumbo-drivers Supported


Supported Drivers	Unsupported Drivers
i40e, mlx5, bnxt, vmxnet3	ixgbe

Jumbo frames are supported for non-DPDK mode and on VLAN interfaces for supported driver families. However, the jumbo frames are not supported on CSP.

Note:
vmxnet3 interface flaps during MTU change.
KNI MTU cannot exceed 1500 even when NIC MTU is configured.
se_mtu versus global_mtu: global_mtu is an SE property that is used to configure the interface MTU. This property can be used to accommodate any encapsulation overhead, that can enlarge the packet beyond the 1500 MTU.
You can replace global_mtu with se_mtu as se_mtu supports jumbo frame. The se_mtu configuration parameter/ field always overrides global_mtu, if configured. For instance, if you configure se_mtu to 9000, the system does not depend on global_mtu value.
- Note:
  The global_mtu is retained only for backward compatibility, that is, if you configure global_mtu in an earlier release and do an upgrade, the global_mtu must still take effect unless you configure se_mtu later.

Supported OpenStack Version

For information on supported versions for OpenStack, see OpenStack Support Matrix.

Note:

The Avi Load Balancer does not support Neutron DVR mode. It supports Keystone v3 in Avi Load Balancer Heat resources.

No-Access Mode

No-Orchestrator: KVM (Red Hat/ CentOS- 7.6 and Ubuntu 16.04) with SR-IOV NICs only. For more information on Linux KVM with SR-IOV data NIC, see Linux KVM with SR-IOV data NIC.

Receiving Multicast on VF: If trusted mode is not enabled for virtual functions. then VF will not receive unmatched and multicast traffic sent to the physical function. If you want to receive this traffic you can enable trusted mode for the corresponding VF using below commands:

ip link set <pf_name> vf <vf_index> trust on

For instance,

ip link set enp134s0f0 vf 0 trust on

ip link set enp134s0f0 vf 1 trust on

For more details on VF, see VF support multicast address and Trusted Virtual Functions guides.

Dynamic addition of NICs in Openstack:: Hotplug addition and deletion of NICs with DPDK enabled is not supported in OpenStack.
Mellanox OFED version:: MLNX_OFED_LINUX-5.8-2.0.3.0-ubuntu20.04-x86_64 (LTS)

Bare Metal (Linux Server Cloud)


Minimum Avi Load Balancer Controller Version	Bare Metal Hosts
18.1.2	OEL 6.9, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 RHEL 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 CentOS 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5
18.1.5	OEL 7.6 RHEL 7.6 CentOS 7.6
18.2.6	OEL 7.7 RHEL 7.7 CentOS 7.7
18.2.9, 20.1.1	OEL 7.8 RHEL 7.8 CentOS 7.8
In 18.2.x: version 18.2.12 onwards In 20.1.x: version 20.1.3 onwards	OEL 7.9 RHEL 7.9 CentOS 7.9
21.1.3	RHEL 8.4
All versions	Ubuntu 16.04
21.1.3	Ubuntu 18.04
21.1.3	Ubuntu 20.04

Note:

For OpenShift/ Kubernetes Clouds, the host OS on OpenShift/ Kubernetes nodes can have RHEL 7.9 from version 18.2.12 onwards.
Rollback operation is not supported once host OS is upgraded to RHEL 8.

For more information on Kernel supported version in bare metal hosts, see Kernel Supported Versions in the Bare metal section.

Bare-Metal NICs

For non-DPDK mode, the Avi Load Balancer supports any server NIC.
For DPDK mode (recommended), the Avi Load Balancer supports the following NICs:


Minimum Avi Load Balancer Version	NICs Name	NICs Supported
18.2.x and 20.1.x releases	Intel NICs	82599, X520, X540, X550, X552, X710, XL710, XXV710
18.2.2 and all 20.1.x releases	Intel NICs	XXV710
18.2.x and 20.1.x releases	Mellanox NICs	NICs Supported: ConnectX-4 25G and ConnectX-4 40G
18.2.x and 20.1.x releases		NICs Supported: MCX4121A-ACAT ConnectX-4 Lx EN 25G NICs
20.1.6 and 21.1.1 releases		NICs Supported: Mellanox Technologies MT27800 Family [ConnectX-5]
21.1.1 onwards		MLNX_OFED version: MLNX_OFED_LINUX-5.1-2.5.8.0 (OFED-5.1-2.5.8)
30.2.1 onwards		NICs Supported: ConnectX-6 Lx MLNX_OFED version: MLNX_OFED_LINUX-5.8-2.0.3.0-ubuntu20.04-x86_64 (LTS)
18.2.8 and all 20.1.x releases	Broadcom NICs	BCM574XX NetXtreme-E family
	Broadcom NICs	Firmware version — 219.0.111.0/pkg 21.90.13.50

IPAM/ DNS

The following IPAM DNS are supported:

Avi Load Balancer DNS
AWS Route 53
Infoblox
Microsoft Azure

Hardware Security Module (HSM)

The following HSMs are supported:

SafeNet Network HSM Client Software Release 5.4.1 for 64-bit Linux

Supported Browsers

The following is the list of browsers supporting the Avi Load Balancer UI:


Browser	Minimum Version Supported
Google Chrome	86
Microsoft Edge	87
Mozilla Firefox	83
Safari	14