The following are the various editions supported on NSX Advanced Load Balancer:

  • VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Enterprise with Cloud Services Edition

  • VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Enterprise Edition

  • VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer – Basic Edition

  • VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Essentials for Tanzu

Note:

The Basic Edition of Avi Load Balancer (formerly known as NSX Advanced Load Balancer) has reached its End of Availability (EoA) date on Jan 30th, 2024. The changes only apply to the Basic Edition of Avi Load Balancer. For additional details, please visit VMware Knowledge Base.

The next section explains the detailed feature list for each of the editions.

Feature Comparison

Categories

Feature

Essentials

Basic

Enterprise

Enterprise with Cloud Services Edition

Local Traffic Management

L4 LB

TCP & UDP Fast Path

No SSL/TLS

TCP & UDP Fast Path & ProxyNo L4 SSL/TLS

TCP, UDP, DNS, SIP, RADIUS DSR, TLS support, PROXY protocol support

TCP, UDP, DNS, SIP, RADIUS DSR, TLS support, PROXY protocol support

L7 LB

X

Limited to basic L7 features and no HTTP/2

HTTP/2, content rewrite, compression, caching

HTTP/2, content rewrite, compression, caching

L3/4 Policies

X

Policies limited to connection drops

No DataScript support

Full-featured, including DataScripts and live IP Reputation

Full-featured, including DataScripts and live IP Reputation

L7 Policies

X

Basic match and actions

Match on: IP Reputation DB, string groups, and so on

Actions to: Rate-limit, ICAP, and so on

Match on: IP Reputation DB, string groups, and so on

Actions to: Rate-limit, ICAP, and so on

Global Traffic Management

Global Server Load Balancing

X

X

Enterprise grade GSLB

Enterprise grade GSLB

Application Security

SSL/TLS

X

Very limited feature-set

Dynamic CRLs, OCSP stapling, TLSv1.3, HSM, and cert management

Dynamic CRLs, OCSP stapling, TLSv1.3, HSM, and cert management

Application Rate Limiting

X

X

Rate limiters can be applied for L4, L7, DNS, and WAF

Rate limiters can be applied for L4, L7, DNS, and WAF

DDoS Protection

X

X

L3, L4, and L7 DDoS protection

L3, L4, and L7 DDoS protection

Intelligent WAF

X

X

CRS, learning/PSM, IPReputation, application signatures

CRS, learning/PSM, IPReputation, application signatures, bot detection

For more information on bot detection, see BOT Management Service topic in the VMware NSX Advanced Load BalancerCloud Services Guide

Container Ingress

Service Type LB

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Container Ingress

X

X

Full Ingress

DNS and GSLB integration

Multi K8s cluster & multi-AZ support

Full Ingress

DNS and GSLB integration

Multi K8s cluster & multi-AZ support

Software Defined Platform

Administration

Basic LB administration

Basic LB administration

Fully multi-tenant & granular RBAC

Rich alerts and events

Various 3rd part integrations

Integrations with various IDPs

Fully multi-tenant & granular RBAC

Rich alerts and events

Various 3rd part integrations

Integrations with various IDPs

Scale and HA

Active/Standby only

Active/Standby only

Active/Active deployments

BGP and ECMP support

Autoscale of load balancers

Active/Active deployments

BGP and ECMP support

Autoscale of load balancers

Flexible upgrades

X

X

Flexible LCM across tenants/clouds/se-groups

Flexible LCM across tenants/clouds/se-groups

Ecosystem automation

No Access Cloud

vCenter

No Access Cloud

NSX-T Cloud

Native integrations with all major public & private clouds and container orchestration platforms

Native integrations with all major public & private clouds and container orchestration platforms

Pulse

X

X

Enhanced case management

Live Security Threat Updates

Enhanced case management

Note:

Proactive case creation is supported.

For more information on Proactive case creation, see Proactive Support topic in the VMware NSX Advanced Load BalancerCloud Services Guide

Live Security Threat Updates

Advanced Analytics

Application Visibility/Analytics

X

X

Advanced application telemetry

Log insights

Advanced application telemetry

Log insights

Functioning of Licensing Editions

The following are a few points on how the licensing editions work in the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller:

  • The Enterprise with Cloud Services Edition is the default licensing tier for an NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller. A new Controller is set up to be in the Enterprise with Cloud Services Edition licensing tier.

  • Customers can request trial service units (saas units) valid for up to 90 days to try out features in the Cloud Services edition. Contact the NSX Advanced Load Balancer representative for more details.

  • VMware continues to ship trial licenses for the Enterprise edition as part of the packaging. The customer must change the license tier to Enterprise to utilize these licenses.

  • The NSX Advanced Load Balancer can be set up in any one of the licensing tier. However, the entire Controller cluster operates in the same license edition tier to which all applications and SEs belong..

  • The License tier for the Controller can be changed from one edition to another without any disruptions of traffic or downtime.

NSX Advanced Load Balancer and NSX Editions

Two different NSX Advanced Load Balancer entitlements are available with VMware NSX:

  • NSX Advanced Load Balancer-Basic Edition

  • NSX Advanced Load Balancer-Enterprise Edition

For more information on Enterprise and Basic Editions, see NSX Advanced Load Balancer-Enterprise Edition and NSX Advanced Load Balancer-Basic Edition.

Starting 8th May 2023, specific NSX Per-Core Term bundles started bundling NSX Advanced Load Balancer with a 250:1 ratio.

To activate NSX Advanced Load Balancer Enterprise licenses that are included as part of NSX, access VMware Customer Connect to obtain the Serial Keys. The NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller will decode the Serial Keys and assign the appropriate number of Service Units based on the specified ratio. The license will be accounted as Service Units from the Controller perspective.

For more information on NSX editions and product, see the NSX+ Features and NSX Features sections on VMware NSX Overview.

Note:

Since the NSX bundle SKUs are based on cores, the same amount of NSX and NSX Advanced Load Balancer for NSX cores can be seen on the Order and VMware Customer Connect. To calculate the amount of Service Units available as part of the entitlement, the amount of cores must be divided by 250 and rounded up.