Advanced Networking Services Guide
Table Of Contents
- vCloud Air Advanced Networking Services Guide
- Contents
- Preface
- Introducing Advanced Networking Services for vCloud Air
- Advanced Routing for vCloud Air
- Certificate and Security Group Management
- Network Security and Isolation
- Load Balancing
- Secure Access Using Virtual Private Networks
- IP Service Management: NAT and DHCP
- Index
Load Balancing 5
The load balancer enables network traffic to follow multiple paths to a specific destination. It distributes
incoming service requests evenly among multiple servers in such a way that the load distribution is
transparent to users. Load balancing helps achieve optimal resource utilization, maximizing throughput,
minimizing response time, and avoiding overload.
Set Up Load Balancing
The load balancer distributes network traffic across multiple servers to achieve optimal resource utilization.
You map an external, or public, IP address to a set of internal servers for load balancing. The load balancer
accepts TCP, HTTP, or HTTPS requests on the external IP address and decides which internal server to use.
The edge gateway provides load balancing up to Layer 7.
Setting up load balancing in vCloud Air consists of the following workflow:
1 You begin by setting global options for the load balancer.
2 You then create an application profile to define the behavior of a particular type of network traffic.
3 Next, you create a service monitor to define health check parameters for the load balancer.
4 You now create a server pool consisting of backend server members and associate a service monitor
with the pool to manage and share the backend servers flexibly and efficiently.
When the virtual server receives a request, it chooses the appropriate pool to distribute the traffic
comprising one or more members based on the associated algorithm. Each pool is monitored by the
associated service monitor. When the load balancer detects a problem with a pool member, it is marked
as down.
5 Finally, create a firewall rule to permit traffic to the new virtual server (the destination IP address). See
“Add an Edge Gateway Firewall Rule,” on page 31 for information.
Port 8090 is the default listening port for TCP, port 80 is the default port for HTTP, and port 443 is the
default port for HTTPs.
Load balancing for an edge gateway is configured on the external interface because the edge gateway load
balances incoming traffic from the external network. When configuring the virtual server for load balancing,
specify one of the available IP addresses you have in your vCloud Air service. See Allocation of Public IP
Addresses in the vCloud Air Networking Guide.
VMware, Inc.
39