In this scenario, your goal is to configure an inline load balancer on the NSX Edge with an HTTP application profile type.

The following figure shows the logical topology of a network that uses an inline load balancer. The NSX Edge at the perimeter of the network does both north-south routing and the load balancing function.


Figure shows a network topology with an inline load balancer and a server pool with three web server VMs.
For this scenario, consider that you have configured the following interfaces on the NSX Edge:
  • Uplink interface: 192.168.100.30/24
  • Internal interface: 10.30.20.1/24

The load balancer uses the uplink interface on the edge for the virtual IP address (VIP). The internal interface on the edge acts as the default gateway for the back-end web servers in the server pool.

You want to load balance the HTTP traffic coming from external clients on the NSX Edge and distribute the traffic to the Web servers that are connected to the VXLAN 5000 logical switch.

The following procedure explains the steps for configuring an inline load balancer on the NSX Edge.

Prerequisites

You must have an NSX Edge Service Gateway deployed in your network.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the vSphere Web Client.
  2. Click Networking & Security > NSX Edges.
  3. Double-click an NSX Edge.
  4. Enable the load balancer service.
    1. Click Manage > Load Balancer > Global Configuration.
    2. Click Edit and enable the load balancer.
  5. Create an HTTP application profile.
    1. Click Manage > Load Balancer > Application Profiles.
    2. Click Add and specify the application profile parameters.
      For example:
      Option Description
      Type Select HTTP.
      Name Enter Web-App-Profile.
      Persistence Keep the default value (None).
  6. Create a server pool.
    1. Click Manage > Load Balancer > Pools, and then click Add.
    2. Specify the pool parameters.
      For example:
      Option Description
      Name Enter Web-Server-Pool.
      Algorithm Select Round-Robin.
      Monitors Select default_http_monitor.
      Transparent Enable this option to ensure that the source client IP addresses are visible to the back-end servers in the pool.
    3. Add members to the server pool.
      For example, specify the following settings for the pool members.
      State Name IP Address Weight Monitor Port Port Max Connections Min Connections
      Enabled Web-1 10.30.20.100 1 80 80 0 0
      Enabled Web-2 10.30.20.101 1 80 80 0 0
      Enabled Web-3 10.30.20.102 1 80 80 0 0
  7. Click Show Status or Show Pool Statistics and verify that the status of the Web-Server-Pool is UP.
    Select the pool and ensure that the status of all members in this pool is UP.
  8. Create a virtual server.
    1. Click Manage > Load Balancer > Virtual Servers, and then click Add.
    2. Specify the virtual server parameters.
      For example, specify the following configuration settings.
      Option Description
      Virtual Server Enable the virtual server.
      Acceleration Keep this option disabled.
      Application Profile Select the Web-App-Profile that you created earlier.
      IP Address Enter or select the IP address that you configured on the uplink (external) interface of the edge.

      For this scenario, select 192.168.100.30.
      Protocol Select HTTP.
      Default Pool Select the Web-Server-Pool that you created earlier.
      Connection Limit Enter 0.
      Connection rate Limit Enter 0.