The Service Engine installation in write access mode is automatic. Download and deploy the Service Engine to install it.

Back-end changes during Avi Load Balancer Service Engine Installation

In VMware write access cloud, where the Controller spawns or deletes Service Engine based on virtual service placement and scaling requirements, the Service Engine bring up involves the following steps:

  1. Reserve the license units required for SE. The reservation can be seen in show license ledger details CLI command as escrow.

  2. Spawn SE and allow it to boot up.

  3. Service Engine boots up and then finally tries to register itself providing the reservation ID (escrow cookie).

  4. The expectation is that SE should come up and consume reservation within 15 minutes and if there are any issues that is detected by resource manager process, then it cancels the reservation after 15 minutes.

  5. However, if the reservation remains unconsumed for more than 15 minutes, such reservations are cleared by license manager process within the time range of one to two hours.

  6. If you want to cancel the reservation, run HTTP GET on api/licensing/ledger/clear/reservation. This API cancels the reservation, it does not impact SE boot-up, only that there will not be any reservation and if multiple SE’s comes up, then the first SE that registers gets precedence.

Tagging Virtual Machine

You can create the SE tags to provide the complete SE name.

Tags and Categories

Tags allow to attach metadata information to objects in the vSphere inventory to make it easier to sort and search for these objects.

A tag is a label that can be applied to the objects in the vSphere inventory. For instance, when you create a tag, you assign that tag to a category. Categories allow you to group related tags together.

When you define a category, you can specify the following.

  • the object types for its tags, and

  • whether more than one tag in the category can be applied to an object.

You can assign or remove a tag by selecting the appropriate option in Tags & Custom Attributes.

Creating or Assigning a tag

You can create or assign tags as follows:

  • You need to create CATEGORY and TAG in vCenter.

  • Configure the SE Group or cloud in the Controller with custom tags where tag_key is selected as CATEGORY and tag_val is selected as TAG name.

  • While creating the CATEGORY, it is recommended to select Many Tags in Tags Per Object section to create tags that are not mutually exclusive. For more details on a tag category, see Create, Edit, or Delete a Tag Category.

Deleting a tag

When SE gets deleted, the object reference from the Tags object list in vCenter will automatically be removed.

However, Tags and Categories will still be present in vCenter. You need to manually delete these entities from vCenter when needed.

Creating a Cloud

Configure the VMware vCenter/ vSphere ESX cloud by navigating to Infrastructure > Clouds. Click CREATE and select VMware vCenter/vSphere ESX option from the drop-down menu.



Name: Specify the name of the cloud.

Type: The system displays the name of the selected cloud. You can amend the type by selecting the required cloud from the drop-down menu.

Object Name Prefix: Specify the default prefix for all the objects created in this cloud. This prefix can be overridden by the SE Group template.

Default Network IP Address Management

Select Enable DHCP and Enable IPv6 Auto Configuration checkbox accordingly.

Management Network

Select Enable IPv4 checkbox to enable IPv4 on the management interface of the Service Engine.

Select Enable IPv6 checkbox to enable IPv6 on the management interface of the Service Engine.

Note:

v6 IPAM for SE Management Network is supported.

Virtual Service Placement

Select Use Static Routes for Network Resolution of VIP checkbox to use static routes for VIP side network resolution during virtual service placement.

Select Prefer Static Routes vs Directly Connected Network checkbox to prefer static routes over interface routes during virtual service placement.

Configure vCenter credentials. Specify the necessary details and click Connect and then specify the data center value.



Select Content Library checkbox and click SAVE & RELAUNCH.

The Management Network will be enabled after saving and relaunching. Specify the Management Network details. You can also provide the IPAM and DNS details as per configuration requirements. Click Save.

VCenter URL

You can modify vCenter URL or IP if the new IP/ URL points to the same datacenter.

vCenter cloud allows you to change vCenter IP in cloud object and accept IPv6 address, if any.

New vCenter IP points to a different vCenter:

vCenter Cloud:

  • vcenter_url in cloud configuration will accept IPv6 also.

  • vcenter_url can be modified only if the new vcenter_url points to the same datacenter of the vCenter.

  • If the vcenter_url points to a different datacenter, then the system displays an error message while saving the cloud.