You can use a load balancer and forward 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.
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 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. 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 Tanzu Operations 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.
Integrate your own load balancer
Use the following procedure to use your own load balancer.
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.
Step 1: Deploy Tanzu Operations Manager installation VM
Deploy an Tanzu Operations Manager Installation VM. For more information, see Deploying Tanzu Operations Manager on vSphere.
Step 2: Register Tanzu Operations Manager IP address
In your load balancer, register the IP addresses that you assigned to Tanzu Operations Manager.
Step 3: Configure Tanzu Operations Manager and BOSH Director
Configure Tanzu Operations 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 Tanzu Operations 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 Tanzu Operations Manager Installation Dashboard.
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Click Install.
