Here are instructions for using your own load balancer and forwarding traffic to your VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs (TAS for VMs) router IP address.
TAS for VMs includes a tier of reverse proxies that dynamically track the location of app containers and system components, enabling routing of requests to those endpoints even as IPs and ports change.
Why you need a load balancer
For the TAS for VMs routers to be horizontally scalable and highly available, a load balancer must be deployed in front of them. The simplest solution is to use a Layer 4 TCP load balancer, provided by your IaaS or IT team, which passes all HTTP and TLS handling to the TAS for VMs routers. For more information about TLS termination, see Securing Traffic into TAS for VMs. For a description of features supported by the TAS for VMs routing tier, see HTTP Routing.
If you have requirements that are not fulfilled by the TAS for VMs routers alone, you can choose to use your own Layer 7 load balancer provided by your IaaS or IT team, or the HAProxy load balancer included with TAS for VMs. If you use HAProxy, you must use a Layer 4 TCP load balancer in front of it in order for HAProxy itself to be highly available. Singleton instances of HAProxy are only for use in lab and test environments.
If you use your own Layer 7 load balancer, it must fulfill the following requirements:
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Provides load balancing to each of the TAS for VMs router IP addresses.
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Supports TLS termination for wildcard hostnames.
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Adds appropriate
x-forwarded-forandx-forwarded-protoHTTP headers to incoming requests. -
Sets an HTTP keepalive connection timeout greater than five seconds.
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(Optional) Supports WebSocket.
The choice to use HAProxy or your own load balancer depends on what features you need out of a load balancer, and whether you want the ability to configure it yourself.
Note: App logging with Loggregator requires WebSocket. To use another logging service, see Streaming App Logs to Log Management Services.
For information about how to install an F5 Local Traffic Manager (LTM) as a load balancer for Ops Manager and TAS for VMs, see Configuring an F5 Load Balancer for TAS for VMs. For more information about F5 LTMs, see the F5 documentation.
Prerequisites
To integrate your own load balancer with TAS for VMs, you must ensure:
- WebSocket connections are not blocked for Loggregator functionality.
- The load balancer must be able to reach the Gorouter IP addresses.
Follow the procedure below to use your own load balancer.
Step 1: Deploy Ops Manager installation VM
Deploy an Ops Manager Installation VM. For more information, see Deploying Ops Manager on vSphere.
Step 2: Register Ops Manager IP address
In your load balancer, register the IP addresses that you assigned to Ops Manager.
Step 3: Configure Ops Manager and BOSH Director
Configure Ops Manager and the BOSH Director as described in Configuring BOSH Director on vSphere, then add TAS for VMs.
Do not click Install after adding TAS for VMs.
Step 4: Configure networking
Configure the Networking pane in TAS for VMs. Load balancer configuration in TAS for VMs varies depending on which IaaS you are using for Ops Manager. For more information, see Configure Networking in Configuring TAS for VMs.
Step 5: Finalize changes
To finalize the changes to your deployment:
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Return to the Ops Manager Installation Dashboard.
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Click Install.
