Orchestrator Access Modes

While Avi Load Balancer can be deployed within a virtualized environment or cloud, the access level that Avi Load Balancer has for communicating with the virtualization orchestrator (such as VMware vCenter) affects how the system operates and is configured. The level of communication that Avi Load Balancer has with the virtualization orchestrator is defined as the access mode.

Avi Load Balancer can be deployed in several different environments, both with or without an orchestrator (such as vCenter or OpenStack).

Access Modes

Mode	Description
No Access Mode	Avi Load Balancer has no access to the orchestrator or is in an environment such as bare metal where there is no orchestrator. In this mode, adding, removing, or modifying properties of a Service Engine requires an administrator to perform the changes manually. For instance, an administrator needs to install a new SE through the orchestrator, such as vCenter, by uploading the OVA and setting the resource and networking properties. If a new virtual service is created, admin access to vCenter may again be required to change the network settings to support the new virtual server. Servers and networks cannot be auto-discovered and must be manually configured. In this mode, the Avi Load Balancer cloud setting is configured as no orchestrator, regardless of the cloud or the virtualization environment.
Write Access Mode	This mode grants Avi Load Balancer full write access to the orchestrator. Avi Load Balancer can automatically create, modify, and remove SEs and other resources as needed to adapt to changing traffic needs. This is the recommended deployment mode when available for a cloud environment. Password access is required for the orchestrator. (An exception is Amazon Web Services [AWS]. AWS requires an access key ID and secret access key or a preconfigured role for access.)