vRealize Automation Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cloud account users can configure load balancers to suport custom solutions, including high availability.

vRealize Automation GCP cloud account users can configure several aspects of load balancer configuration to support specific requirements. These features can support provisioning infrstructure for SAP NetWeaver and SAP Hana, for example.

Setting up a high availability load balancer configuration with a GCP cloud account

vRealize Automation users with a GCP cloud account can configure several aspects of load balancer configuration to support specific requirements, such as high availability. These features can support provisioning infrstructure for SAP NetWeaver and SAP Hana, for example.

This configuration enables you to deploy different load balancer instances in different availability zones. To set this up, you need to configure the following comoponents in GCP:

  • Reserve virtual IP addressses
  • Provision health checks
  • Create a firewall rule to support the health checks
The following page describes how to set up and configure these components in GCP: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/sap/docs/netweaver-ha-config-rhel#configure_the_failover_support In addition see the following pages for information about NetWeaver and Hana configurations:

After you set up the GCP side, you must set up the appropriate components in vRealize Automation as described below:

  • Create a GCP cloud account if you don't already have one.
  • Set up flavor and image mapping as appropriate for your environment.
  • Create a default network profile and tag it so that you can invoke it from a cloud template.
  • Create Compute availability zones and tag them appropriately. These enable you to tell vRealize Automation to provision instanes and instance groups to specific availability zones in a cloud template.

When you have configured all of these components, you can navigate to the Cloud Assembly Design tab and create a cloud template. This template should model the appropriate load balancer configuration with specifications for health check and instances and instance groups as appropriate. For high availability purposes, you must configure multiple load balancers. The cloud template should also specify the appropriate virtual machines and the availability zones in which they should be deployed.

The following cloud template example demonstrates how one might set up a high availability load balancer configuration for NetWeaver.

formatVersion: 1
inputs: {}
resources:
  Cloud_LoadBalancer_1:
    type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
    properties:
      routes:
        - healthCheckConfiguration:
            healthyThreshold: 2
            unhealthyThreshold: 2
            timeoutSeconds: 10
            intervalSeconds: 10
            port: 65000
            protocol: TCP
          protocol: TCP
          port: 1000
          instancePort: 1000
      network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      instances:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.id}
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.id}
      internetFacing: false
      fallbackInstanceGroupsByInstanceNames:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.resourceName}
  Cloud_LoadBalancer_2:
    type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
    properties:
      routes:
        - healthCheckConfiguration:
            healthyThreshold: 2
            unhealthyThreshold: 2
            timeoutSeconds: 10
            intervalSeconds: 10
            port: 65000
            protocol: TCP
          protocol: TCP
          port: 1000
          instancePort: 1000
      network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      instances:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.id}
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.id}
      internetFacing: false
      useInstanceGroupsFrom: ${resource.Cloud_LoadBalancer_1.resourceName}
      fallbackInstanceGroupsByInstanceNames:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.resourceName}
  Cloud_GCP_Machine_2:
    type: Cloud.GCP.Machine
    properties:
      image: image
      flavor: flavor
      networks:
        - network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      constraints:
        - tag: zone-b
  Cloud_Network_1:
    type: Cloud.Network
    properties:
      networkType: existing
      constraints:
        - tag: default
  Cloud_GCP_Machine_1:
    type: Cloud.GCP.Machine
    properties:
      image: image
      flavor: flavor
      networks:
        - network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      constraints:
        - tag: zone-a

Additional load balancer configuration options

Using cloud template configurations, vRealize Automation users can configure the following additional aspects of load balancer configuration.

  • Share instance groups between load balancers
  • Configure failover instance groups
  • Configure your load balancers to accept traffic on all ports

Share instance groups

To share instance groups between the load balancers the users must explicitly declare it in the blueprint. Because there isn't direct access to the instance groups in the blueprint, the customers must use the useInstanceGroupsFrom property. In this way vRealize Automation will provision the first load balancer and will reuse the instance groups in the other load balancers.

The following example illustratess how you can use a cloud template to configure two load balancers where the second one uses the instance groups from the first one:

Cloud_LoadBalancer_1:
    type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
    properties:
      routes:
        - healthCheckConfiguration:
            healthyThreshold: 2
            unhealthyThreshold: 2
            timeoutSeconds: 10
            intervalSeconds: 10
            port: 65000
            protocol: TCP
          protocol: TCP
      network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      instances:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.id}
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.id}
      internetFacing: false
  Cloud_LoadBalancer_2:
    type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
    properties:
      routes:
        - healthCheckConfiguration:
            healthyThreshold: 2
            unhealthyThreshold: 2
            timeoutSeconds: 10
            intervalSeconds: 10
            port: 65000
            protocol: TCP
          protocol: TCP
      network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      instances:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.id}
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.id}
      internetFacing: false
      useInstanceGroupsFrom: ${resource.Cloud_LoadBalancer_1.resourceName}

Configure failover instance groups

To configure failover instance groups for each GCP load balancer you must explicitly declare it in the cloud template. Because there isn't direct access to the instance groups in the template, you need to use the failoverInstanceGroupsByInstanceNames property which tells vRealize Automation to find the instance group by a machine that is contained in that instance group.

The following example illustrates configuration of a load balancer which has one primary and one failover instance group:

Cloud_LoadBalancer_1:
  type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
  properties:
    routes:
      - healthCheckConfiguration:
          healthyThreshold: 2
          unhealthyThreshold: 2
          timeoutSeconds: 10
          intervalSeconds: 10
          port: 65000
          protocol: TCP
        protocol: TCP
    network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
    instances:
      - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.id}
      - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.id}
    internetFacing: false
    failoverInstanceGroupsByInstanceNames:
      - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.resourceName}

Configure for traffic on all ports

To configure a load balancer to accept traffic on all ports, you can omit the port property of the route configuration. You can view a sample cloud template that uses the three newly created features and provisions the infrastructure for this setup https://cloud.google.com/solutions/sap/docs/netweaver-ha-config-rhel#configure_the_failover_support

formatVersion: 1
inputs: {}
resources:
  Cloud_LoadBalancer_1:
    type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
    properties:
      routes:
        - healthCheckConfiguration:
            healthyThreshold: 2
            unhealthyThreshold: 2
            timeoutSeconds: 10
            intervalSeconds: 10
            port: 65000
            protocol: TCP
          protocol: TCP
      network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      instances:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.id}
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.id}
      internetFacing: false
      failoverInstanceGroupsByInstanceNames:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.resourceName}
      address: 10.132.0.72
  Cloud_LoadBalancer_2:
    type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
    properties:
      routes:
        - healthCheckConfiguration:
            healthyThreshold: 2
            unhealthyThreshold: 2
            timeoutSeconds: 10
            intervalSeconds: 10
            port: 65000
            protocol: TCP
          protocol: TCP
      network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      instances:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.id}
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_2.id}
      internetFacing: false
      useInstanceGroupsFrom: ${resource.Cloud_LoadBalancer_1.resourceName}
      failoverInstanceGroupsByInstanceNames:
        - ${resource.Cloud_GCP_Machine_1.resourceName}
      address: 10.132.0.64
  Cloud_GCP_Machine_2:
    type: Cloud.GCP.Machine
    properties:
      image: image
      flavor: flavor
      networks:
        - network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      constraints:
        - tag: zone-c
  Cloud_Network_1:
    type: Cloud.Network
    properties:
      networkType: existing
      constraints:
        - tag: default
  Cloud_GCP_Machine_1:
    type: Cloud.GCP.Machine
    properties:
      image: image
      flavor: flavor
      networks:
        - network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}
      constraints:
        - tag: zone-b