Overview

NSX Advanced Load Balancer is a software-based solution that provides real-time analytics and elastic application delivery services, including user-to-application timing, SSL termination, and load balancing. Installing it directly onto Linux servers leverages the raw horsepower of the underlying hardware without the overhead added by a virtualization layer.

VMware recommends that you disable hyper threading (HT) in the BIOS of the Linux servers upon which NSX Advanced Load Balancer runs before installing it. It does not get changed often, but RHEL, OEL and CentOS may map physical and hyperthreaded cores differently. Rather than basing its decision on the behaviour or characteristics of a core, the load balancer has a predictive map of the host OS via which it skips or ignores hyperthreaded cores. When an OS gets upgraded, this map might change, which means you might be utilizing an HT core instead of a physical core, which will impact the performance.

Docker Container

The NSX Advanced Load Balancer Linux server cloud solution uses containerization provided by the Docker for support across operating systems and easy installation.