NSX Advanced Load Balancer Integration
NSX Advanced Load Balancer (ALB), formerly known as Avi Vantage, is VMware’s load balancer solution. It can provide ubiquitous, high-performance load balancing functionality for pod networking (L4 load balancer and ingress), and node networking in the Kubernetes cluster through deploying AKO (Avi Kubernetes Operator) in a cluster. By interacting with Avi Controller, it can provide traffic observability, network security, high configurable load balancer data plane and other advance features. For more information on the services provided by NSX ALB, see Avi with Cloud Services.
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid - NSX Advanced Load Balancer integration provides you the easiest solution to completely leverage the features of the NSX Advanced Load Balancer in an enterprise level multi-Kubernetes clusters scenario.
The integrated solution helps implement:
- L4 Load Balancer Implementation
- L7 ingress controller
- Cluster endpoint VIP and control plane load balancing provider
- IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack networking
This is achieved by running an Avi Kubernetes Operator (AKO) on each cluster. When compared with the AKO that is installed directly through the Helm CLI, the AKO managed by Tanzu Kubernetes Grid has huge advantages and unique and powerful functionalities, as described in the following table:
| AKO managed by Tanzu Kubernetes Grid | AKO installed using the Helm chart | |
|---|---|---|
| AKO configurations and Functionalities (AKO CRDs) | Yes |
Yes |
| AKO Lifecycle (Deploy/Upgrade/Deletion) Management | Yes |
Manual |
| AKO Credentials and Certificate Management | Yes |
Manual |
| Avi Resource Lifecycle Management | Yes |
Manual |
| Cluster Endpoint VIP IPAM and Configuration | Yes |
No |
| Cluster Control Plane Nodes Load Balancing | Yes |
No |
| IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack networking | Yes | No |
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid includes VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer Essentials Edition.
To install NSX ALB for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solution, or Google Cloud VMware Engine, see Install NSX Advanced Load Balancer in a VMware Cloud Environment.
NSX Advanced Load Balancer Features in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
You can configure NSX Advanced Load Balancer in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid as the:
- Load Balancer type of service implementation in the workloads in the clusters that are deployed on vSphere, VMware Cloud, and Azure VMware Solution (AVS). For more information, see NSX ALB as Cluster Load Balancer Service Provider.
- L7 ingress service controller for the workloads in the clusters that are deployed on vSphere. This feature requires an Enterprise license. For more information, see NSX ALB as L7 Ingress Controller.
- Cluster endpoint VIP provider and load balancer for the control plane nodes. For more information, see NSX ALB as Control Plane Endpoint Provider.
All the functionalities are achieved by running AKO in the Kubernetes cluster, which interacts with NSX Advanced Load Balancer. For more information on AKO, see Avi Kubernetes Operator.
Dual-Stack Support
For information about how to implement dual-stack networking for both of the NSX ALB load balancer and ingress services, see IPv4/IPv6 Dual-Stack Networking.
