This section discusses the licensing option available for NSX Advanced Load Balancer deployment with Microsoft Azure

NSX Advanced Load Balancer supports the following two licenses, which must be chosen during the cloud creation:

  • Bring your own license

  • Pay-as-you-go license

Bring Your Own License (BYOL)

Please obtain the license from your NSX Advanced Load Balancer representative, and upload it to the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller. The following license units are available:

  • Cores (vCPUs)

  • Service Engine Bandwidth (25Mbps, 200Mbps)

Note:

The NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller includes a 30-day, full-featured BYOL trial license.

Azure Pay-as-you-go (Azure PAYG)

When the Azure PAYG license is selected, a license file is not required. The licensing and usage are calculated based on the SEs instantiated in Azure. Usage and billing for the Azure PAYG license are calculated based on the time the SE is in the powered-on state in Azure, in an hourly increment.

The following bandwidth licenses are available:

  • 25Mb (default)

  • 200Mb

NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller’s SKUs in Azure Marketplace

An SKU is the commercial name for a virtual machine image in Azure. NSX Advanced Load Balancer has two Controller SKUs in Azure Marketplace:

  • nsx-alb-controller-2201: NSX ALB (Avi) Controller Version 22.1.x - BYOL and PAYG

  • nsx-alb-controller-2101: NSX ALB (Avi) Controller Version 21.1.x - BYOL and PAYG

For more information on these SKUs, see VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi Networks).

Service Engine SKUs

The following new, hidden SE SKUs have been published in the Azure marketplace:

  • nsx-alb-se-2201-byol and nsx-alb-se-2101-byol : This SKU will be used to spin up an SE when the BYOL license model is selected. This SKU does not have a software cost associated with it.

  • nsx-alb-se-2201-payg-bw-25m and nsx-alb-se-2101-payg-bw-25m: This SE SKU will be used to spin up an SE when the PAYG-25M bandwidth license is selected. This license model is the default for the PAYG licensing. This SKU has a software cost associated with it.

  • nsx-alb-se-2201-payg-bw-200m and nsx-alb-se-2101-payg-bw-200m: This SE SKU will be used to spin up an SE when the PAYG, 200M bandwidth license is selected. This SKU has a software cost associated with it.

When the BYOL license is selected,

  • The nsx-alb-se-2201-byol or the nsx-alb-se-2101-byol license is used to create a SE. As this is a BYOL SKU, no software charge will be incurred.

  • When the Azure PAYG license is selected, the nsx-alb-2201-payg-bw SKUs or nsx-alb-2101-payg-bw SKUs will be used to create a Service Engine. As these SKUs have an hourly cost associated with them, the respective software charge will be incurred and billed directly by Azure.