NSX Advanced Load Balancer is a software-based solution that provides real-time analytics and elastic application delivery services.It optimizes core web functions, including SSL termination and load balancing.
NSX Advanced Load Balancer runs on virtual machines (VMs) managed by VMware vCenter. When deployed into a vCenter-managed VMware cloud, it performs as a fully distributed, virtualized system consisting of a Controller and SEs each running as a VM.
The NSX Advanced Load Balancer platform is built on software-defined architectural principles that separate the data plane and control plane. The product components include:
NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller (Control Pane) - The NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller stores and manages all policies related to services and management. Through vCenter, the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller discovers VMs, data centers, networks, and hosts. Based on this auto-discovered information, virtual services can quickly be added using the web interface. To deploy a virtual service, the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller automatically selects an ESX server, spins up an SE (described below), and connects it to the correct networks (port groups).
Network objects in NSX Advanced Load Balancer now sync with the name of the associated port group in vCenter. Prior to the 22.1.1 version, changing name of the port group and name of the network in NSX Advanced Load Balancer was independent of each other.
Controllers need access to the desired ESXi hosts (over port 443) to allow the Controller-to-vCenter communication.
The NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller can be deployed as a single VM or as a high availability cluster of 3 NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller instances, each running on a separate VM. A single NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller cluster supports multiple concurrent vCenter clouds.
NSX Advanced Load Balancer SE (Data Plane) - Each NSX Advanced Load Balancer SE runs on its virtual machine. It provides the application delivery services to end-user traffic, and also collect real-time end-to-end metrics for traffic between end-users and applications.
