Clouds are containers for the environment that NSX Advanced Load Balancer is installed or operating within. During initial setup of NSX Advanced Load Balancer, a cloud, named Default-Cloud, is pre-configured. This is where the first Controller is deployed. More clouds can be added, containing SEs and virtual services.

To view the clouds available, from the NSX Advanced Load Balancer UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Clouds.



In this screen, you can find all the clouds that are created with the Type of environments, such as vCenter, OpenStack, or bare metal servers (no orchestrator) and the Status of the cloud indicating the readiness of the cloud. Mouse over the icon provides more information about the status, such as ready for use or incomplete configuration.

From this screen, you can also perform the following functions.

  • Edit an existing cloud.

  • Convert the cloud from read access mode or write access mode to no access mode. When in no access mode, NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller do not have access to the cloud’s orchestrator, such as vCenter.

  • Download the SE Image. When NSX Advanced Load Balancer is deployed in read access mode or no access mode, SEs must be installed manually. Use this button to pull the SE image for the appropriate image type (ova or qcow2). The SE image will have the Controller’s IP or cluster IP address embedded within it, so an SE image may only be used for the NSX Advanced Load Balancer deployment that created it.

  • Generate Token. Authentication tokens are used for securing communication between Controllers and SEs. If NSX Advanced Load Balancer is deployed in read access mode or no access mode, the SE authentication tokens must be copied manually by the NSX Advanced Load Balancer user from the Controller web interface to the cloud orchestrator.

  • Click the plus icon or anywhere within the table row to expand the row and show more information about the cloud. For instance, in AWS the Region, Availability Zone, and Networks are shown.

  • Select a cloud and click Delete to remove the cloud. However, a cloud cannot be deleted if it is associated with a virtual service, or any other object such as a pool or Service Engine group.

Creating a Cloud

  1. NSX Advanced Load Balancer UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Clouds.

  2. Click Create and select the environment in which NSX Advanced Load Balancer has to be installed.

  3. Configure the settings based on the cloud selected.

See VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Installation Guide for information specific to the cloud connector`