eLearning: A10 Quick Classes

A10 Quick Classes: Basic Load Balancing Configuration (#1)

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We will teach you how to configure and manage a Layer 4 VIP (virtual IP) on your AX Series server load balancer. But before we start the training, let's begin with a quick review of the main benefits of the AX Series.

The first benefit of the AX Series is to share the load among two or more servers and to simply offer more scale by adding new commodity servers. A second benefit of the AX Series is its ability to provide higher availability for your applications.

Transcript

Welcome to the first installment of A10's Quick Classes for the AX Server Load Balancer. A10 Networks is the technology leader in application delivery networking. Our AX Series Advanced Application Delivery Controllers represent a New Generation of Server Load Balancers that are Faster, Better, and Greener than any competing solution on the market today.

I'm "A10 Man" and I'll be your eLearning trainer. Today we'll be talking about basic load balancing configuration for the AX Server Load Balancer.

I'm going to teach you how to configure and manage a Layer 4 Virtual IP (or "VIP") on your AX Server Load Balancer (SLB). But before we start the training, let's begin with a quick review of the main benefits of the AX Server Load Balancer.

The first benefit of the AX Server Load Balancer is to share the load among two or more servers and to simply offer more scale by adding new commodity servers. Instead of directing many client requests to a single server, traffic is split among several servers, to prevent any server from being overwhelmed.

A second benefit of the AX Server Load Balancer is its ability to provide higher availability for your applications. The AX load balancer continually checks the availability of the application on each server. If a service becomes unavailable or if a server goes down, the AX detects the failure and removes the server from its list.

When configuring the AX Server Load Balancer, there are three core elements involved: Real Servers, Service Groups, and Virtual Servers. The first elements we will configure are the real servers hosting your applications. These are the servers that the AX appliance will be load balancing.

The second element we will configure is the Service Group. A Service Group offers a way to bind two or more servers together to enhance system scalability and availability.

The third element we will configure is called the Virtual IP or VIP. This is the IP address users will contact to access their application.

The AX Server Load Balancer is very flexible, and can be deployed in a number of modes, such as Routed Mode, One-arm Mode, Transparent Mode, and Direct Server Return Mode. These modes will be discussed in another eLearning video. Today's training session will focus on routed mode. Before we configure our first VIP, let's take a look at my lab.

This illustration of my lab shows the AX with two subnets, an external subnet, and an internal subnet. The AX sits between these two subnets, routing traffic back and forth between them. We will configure a VIP on the AX to access a web application that is hosted on two internal servers. The VIP address assigned to the AX will be "10.0.1.12".

Let's start the configuration. We will begin by logging into the AX appliance. Enter the IP in the URL of a web browser, and then click the link to continue. By default, the user name is "admin". Enter "a10" for the password and click OK. When you have logged in, the AX Series Summary window appears.

Next, we will configure the first core element: real servers "s1" and "s2". Select the Config Mode tab, and then click the Service link. Select SLB, and then navigate to the Server link.

Click the Add button.

The Server Create window appears. Click inside the Name text box and name the first real server.

We will call the server "s1". Click inside the IP Address text box, and then enter the IP address for the first server.

In my lab, the first real server has an IP address of "10.0.2.18".

Click the Port text box and enter 80. Then, click the Add button.

The server port appears in the table. Click the OK button to proceed.

The new server appears in the table. Click the add button and repeat these steps to add our second real server.

As we did before, enter a name for the server. "s2" is the name for our second real server. We will give it an IP address of "10.0.2.19". Scroll down, and once again, enter 80 in the Port text box. Click the Add button. Click the OK button to save your changes.

Both of our real servers are listed here. Next, we will create the 2nd core element: The Service Group Click the Service Group button from the menu bar. Next, click the Add button. The Service Group window appears. Enter a name for the Service Group in the text box. We will call it "webApp-group1".

Scroll down to the Server section of the window. Enter 80 in the Port field, and then click the Server drop-down menu. Select the first server we configured, "s1". And click the Add button.

The "s1" server appears here. Return to the Server drop-down menu and select our other server. Select "s2". And then click the Add button to add it to the Service Group. Both of our servers appear listed under the Service Group. Click the OK button to save your changes.

Our Service Group, "webApp-group1", appears in the Service Group table. And finally, we will create the 3rd core element: the Virtual Server (or VIP) Click the Virtual Server button from the menu bar. Click the Add button. Enter a name for the VIP in the Name field. We will be using the name "vip1". Then enter an IP address: "10.0.1.12". Click the Add button. Enter a Port value of 80 for TCP (since we are load balancing a web application). Click the Service Group drop-down menu and select "webApp-group1", which we've just created. Scroll down and click OK. And then click OK again. That's it! We've added our Layer 4 VIP. We can validate our recent configurations by checking the status of our newly created VIP and servers to make sure they are up and running.

Simply navigate to "Monitor Mode" > "Service" > "SLB" > "Virtual Server". As the arrow is green and not red, I can see that my VIP is up and running. And for TCP service on port 80, the green arrows confirm that my two servers ("s1" and "s2") are also up and running.

Next, we will access the VIP service from the external IP. By doing so, we will create traffic on our newly created VIP, and we will use the AX monitoring tools to validate that this traffic is being load balanced across our two servers.

We will open another browser session and enter the IP address of our VIP: "10.0.1.12". We can see our hosted web application as the text and images are downloaded to our client. Return to the AX GUI and click the Refresh button. We can see the traffic from our client. There are 6 current sessions being load balanced, with 3 sessions on each real server ("s1" and "s2").

So now you know the basics of configuring an AX Series Server Load Balancer to provide scalability and high availability to your applications. This completes our first A0 Quick Class video, but be sure to return to the A10 Networks website for additional videos on configuring the AX Server Load Balancer. This is A10 Man saying "Happy Load Balancing with A10 Networks!"