Activate the Integrated Load Balancer

When you activate the vRealize Log Insight integrated load balancer (ILB) on a vRealize Log Insight cluster, you must configure one or more virtual IP addresses.

The Integrated Load Balancer supports one or more virtual IP addresses (vIPs). Each vIP balances incoming ingestion and query traffic among available vRealize Log Insight nodes. It is a best practice to connect all vRealize Log Insight clients through a vIP and not directly to a node.

To simplify future changes and upgrades, you can have clients point to an FQDN that resolves to the ILB IP address, instead of pointing directly to the ILB IP address. vSphere and vRealize Operations integrations and alert messages use the FQDN if provided. Otherwise, they use the ILB IP address. vRealize Log Insight can resolve the FQDN to the given IP address, which means that the FQDN value you provide should match what is defined in DNS.

Prerequisites

• Verify that all vRealize Log Insight nodes and the specified Integrated Load Balancer IP address are on the same network.
• If you are using vRealize Log Insight with NSX, verify that the Enable IP Discovery option is deactivated on the NSX logical switch.
• The vRealize Log Insight primary and worker nodes must have the same certificates. Otherwise, the vRealize Log Insight Agents configured to connect through SSL reject the connection. When uploading a CA-signed certificate to vRealize Log Insight primary and worker nodes, set the Common Name to the ILB FQDN (or IP address) during the certificate generation request. See Generate a Certificate Signing Request.
• You must synchronize the time on the vRealize Log Insight virtual appliance with an NTP server. See Synchronize the Time on the Log Insight Virtual Appliance.

Procedure

1. Expand the main menu and navigate to Management > Cluster.
2. In the Integrated Load Balancer section, select New Virtual IP Address and enter the virtual IP (vIP) address to use for integrated load balancing.
3. (Optional) To configure multiple virtual IP addresses, click New Virtual IP Address and enter the IP address. You can choose to enter the FQDN and tags.
   • Each vIP should be in the same subnet as at least one network interface on each node and the vIP must be available (not used by any other machine).
   • Tags let you add fields with predefined values to events for easier querying. You can add multiple comma-separated tags. All events coming into the system through a vIP are marked with the vIP's tags.
   • You can configure a list of static tags (key=value) for an ILB vIP, so that each log message received from the vIP is annotated with the configured tags.
4. (Optional) To activate vRealize Log Insight users to access the cluster through FQDN, point the clients to the FQDN instead of directly to the configured ILB IP address.
   You might want to have clients point to an FQDN that resolves to an ILB IP address to simplify future changes and upgrades. You can have clients point to the FQDN instead of pointing directly to the ILB IP address.
5. Click Save.
   The Integrated Load Balancer is managed by one node in the vRealize Log Insight cluster, declared the leader for that service. The current leader is denoted by the text (ILB) next to the node.