This section discusses enabling and testing IPv6 on NSX Advanced Load Balancer in a bare-metal, VMware read/write/no-access, and Linux server cloud.

Deploying IPv6 at the load balancer stage allows servicing IPv6 requests without establishing IPv6 connectivity to any of the servers hosted behind the load balancer. With this setup, you can deploy and test IPv6 applications with minimum changes to the current configuration.

NSX Advanced Load Balancer provides full IPv6, dual-stack IPv4, and IPv6 connectivity to the load balancing network without relying on tunneling solutions. You can ensure the best combination of throughput and performance for all your IPv6-enabled clients.

Ecosystem Support

This article discusses deployment support for the below mentioned ecosystems. For other supported ecosystems and related documentation refer to IPv6 Support in Avi Vantage.

Sl.No

Ecosystem Support

Driver/NIC Type

Service Engine Addressing

1

Bare metal

DPDK/PCAP

Static

2

VMware read/write/no-access

DPDK

Static / DHCPv6

3

Linux server cloud

DPDK/PCAP

Static

Points to Consider

  • To install the Avi Controller in a bare-metal environment using Avi CLI, refer to Install Avi Controller Image. To select the DPDK mode, enter a Yes at the prompt. This is applicable for Service Engines as well.

  • Active/active and N+M are the supported HA modes.

  • Multiple IPv6 IPs for VIPs are not supported.

  • Service Engine IP addresses will be static for this testing.

  • IPv4 and IPv6 VIPs need to be on the same interface for the virtual service placement not to fail.

  • The use cases are executed with configuration in a single-arm set-up and can be easily implemented using two-arm mode.

Configuration Steps

The CLI configuration requires access to the Controller shell, as shown in the example below. Begin with the host, and from there, log into the Avi Controller, followed by shell access.

root@user:~# ssh [email protected]
[email protected]'s password:
Last login: Thu Nov  2 17:50:53 2017 from 172.17.0.2
[root@avi-bgl-bm-centos1 ~]# docker exec -it avicontroller bash
root@10-140-1-4:/# shell
Login: admin
Password:
[admin:10-140-1-4]: >

The configuration hierarchy is as follows:

  1. Service Engine

  2. Pool (s)

  3. Virtual service

Use Case Scenarios

This section explains the configuration required in the following use cases:

  1. IPv6 VIP with IPv6 and IPv4 Backend

  2. IPv4v6 VIP (Dual Stack) with IPv6 & IPv4 Backend

  3. Layer 2 Scale Out

  4. Layer 2 Scale In