The VMware Pulse IoT Center load balancer port accepts all incoming request for a multi-node VMware Pulse IoT Center deployment. The requests are for accessing the VMware Pulse IoT Center console using browsers, API requests, VMware Pulse IoTC Agent, and so on.
The load balancer accepts TCP or HTTPS requests on the virtual IP address and decides which server to use.
Basic deployment architecture of VMware Pulse IoT Center includes the following:
- An instance of VMware Pulse IoT Center - a multi-node (VM) having three VMware Pulse IoT Center server nodes and one load balancer node. The three VMware Pulse IoT Center server nodes cluster to form a HA deployment. The load balancer provides a single network route to all the three VMware Pulse IoT center nodes.
- To reach the VMware Pulse IoT Center, the IoT devices, VMware Pulse IoT Center browsers console, and VMware Pulse IoT Center APIs must use the load balancer URL. The load balancer only routes VMware Pulse IoT Center business traffic to each of the VMware Pulse IoT Center instances on port 443. The administrative interface on Port 8443 is not load balanced.
The following diagram illustrates how VMware Pulse IoT Center users and a load balancer interacts with IoT gateways and external gateways.
The VMware Pulse IoT Center users and the IoT gateways can be connected to the VMware Pulse IoT Center from various networks depending on:
- Intranet Use - Users and gateways can access the VMware Pulse IoT Center from within the secure walls of the corporate network. To use this topology, users and gateways must access the VMware Pulse IoT Center load balancer on port 443.
- Hybrid Use - Users and IoT gateways connect to the VMware Pulse IoT Center either from a corporate network or outside the corporate network. Connecting from outside a corporate network requires a unique DNS name that resolves to an external IP for accessing a public domain, and to an internal IP address for accessing within the internal network.
Note: The certificate used for the VMware Pulse IoT Center load balancer contains a DNS name in the CN or SAN entry of the certificate.