NSX Advanced Load Balancer supports flexible methods for upgrading the NSX Advanced Load Balancer system.

The followings are the main features for the Flexible Upgrades:

  • NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller can be upgraded/patched first and later the Service Engine groups are upgraded .

  • The upgrade is possible per SE group. The transition of all the SE groups to the new version might occur over a long period.

  • Upgrades of different SE groups are supported with different patch versions.

  • Rollback to the previous versions of NSX Advanced Load Balancer is non-disruptive.

Upgrades are non-disruptive for virtual services running in:

  • Elastic HA, Active-Active mode

  • Elastic HA, N+M buffer mode, for virtual services scaled to two or more SEs <--- Our configuration

  • Legacy Active-Standby mode

However, if there are long-outstanding connections on SEs, those are bound to get impacted when upgrade scale-in happens.

Upgrades are disruptive for virtual services running in:Elastic HA, N+M Buffer mode, for virtual services placed on just one SE (not scaled out)

Note:

SEs in N+M buffer mode without scaled out virtual services will be upgraded in parallel and not in series.

The following options are available with Flexible Upgrades.

Upgrades

Patch Ugrades

Rollback

Rollback Patch

System (NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller and SE Groups)

System (NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller and SE Groups)

System (NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller and SE Groups)

System (NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller and SE Groups)

NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller only

NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller only

NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller only

NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller only

Some or all the SE groups

Some or all the SE groups

Some or all the SE groups

Some or all the SE groups

Use Cases

  • Scenarios where it is not possible to upgrade all SE groups to the newer version at the same time due to various business reasons such as logistics, confidence in the new software, and so on

  • The configuration is blocked during the entire duration of the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller and SE upgrade. This is not acceptable in many deployments. With the new upgrade feature, the process is flexible and can be performed on an SE group basis. The configuration is blocked for the entire duration if a system upgrade is performed till all SEs are upgraded

  • Using SE groups for data plane separation. Based on the SE group segmentation, the upgrade is performed depending on the following attributes:

    • Application or product offering

    • Tenant

    • Production, pre-production, and development environments

    • Cloud or environment (AWS, VMware, and so on.)

    • Provide patches to only applications or SE groups that need them

  • Flexible scheduling

  • Self-service upgrades