The NSX Application Platform Automation Appliance documentation extensively uses terminologies and concepts fundamental to understanding product functionalities and features.
- Form Factor
-
Form factor determines the size of the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on the Supervisor or Upstream Kubernetes cluster and the minimum number of nodes your infrastructure administrator must allocate.
- Frontend Network
-
The Frontend network is where the HA Proxy listens for the virtual IP addresses (VIPs). The
NSX Application Platform consumes some VIPs to provide highly available ingress access to the platform for different purposes such as API,
Security Intelligence flows, or UI.
This network can be considered as the entry point to the NSX Application Platform.
- HA Proxy
- HA Proxy is the load balancer that provides the platform required for VIPs to ensure reliability and performance.
- NSX Application Platform Automation Appliance
-
NSX Application Platform Automation Appliance automates the deployment, configuration, and management of applications on the
vSphere with Tanzu,
VMware vCenter, and
NSX platforms.
Automation is achieved through scripting, templates, and APIs to streamline the process of deploying and managing the NSX Application Platform.
- Kubeconfig
- A YAML file used to store cluster authentication information, specifically for manual NSX Application Platform deployment.
- Management Network
- A Management network provides a separate infrastructure and connectivity for administrative tasks, system management, and operational control.
- NSX Application Platform Instance
- A deployment instance of the NSX Application Platform that hosts various security verticals such as Security Intelligence, NSX Malware Prevention, and so on. Each NSX Application Platform instance ingests information from an NSX Manager deployment.
- Supervisors
- Enabling existing vSphere clusters for vSphere with Tanzu creates a Kubernetes layer within the ESXi hosts that are part of the clusters. vSphere clusters activated for vSphere with Tanzu are called Supervisor Clusters.
- vSphere with Tanzu
- Transforms vSphere into a platform to run Kubernetes workloads natively on the hypervisor layer. When activated on vSphere clusters, vSphere with Tanzu can run Kubernetes workloads directly on ESXi hosts and create Upstream Kubernetes clusters within dedicated namespaces called vSphere Namespace.
