AX SerieseLearning: A10 Quick Classes
Deploying an IPv6-ready Website for Your Enterprise (#3)
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We will show how to configure your AX application delivery controller as an IPv6-IPv4 gateway, which will enable IPv6 clients to access your existing IPv4 infrastructure.
The AX Series provides load balancing services to any combination of IPv4 or v6 clients, and IPv4 or IPv6 servers.
Transcript
Welcome to A10 Networks Quick Classes for the AX Series Server Load Balancer. A10 Networks is the technology leader in advanced application delivery solutions. Our AX Series Application Delivery Controllers are New Generation 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 deploying an IPv6-ready website for your enterprise. We will show how to configure your AX application delivery controller as an IPv6-IPv4 gateway, which will enable IPv6 clients to access your existing IPv4 infrastructure.
The AX Series provides load balancing services to any combination of IPv4 or v6 clients, and IPv4 or IPv6 servers. Today, most people use IPv4 clients to access IPv4 servers, as shown with the heavy blue arrows at right.
End users and enterprises are beginning to move to IPv6. IPv6 traffic is currently low, but migration to an all-IPv6 network is expected as the IPv4 addresses run out. To prepare for this scenario, the AX can load balance traffic between IPv6 clients and IPv6 servers, as shown at right.
In the meantime, the Internet wil be a mix of IPv4 and IPv6 technologies. Some Operating Systems, such as Microsoft Windows 7, and some ISPs already offer IPv6 support. However, most enterprise applications still run on the older IPv4 infrastructure. The AX SLB-PT feature allows enterprises to continue to use their existing infrastructure by enabling IPv6 clients to access IPv4 servers, as shown at right.
The fourth scenario involves the AX load balancing traffic from IPv4 clients to IPv6 servers, as shown at right. This may happen if end users are slow to adopt the IPv6 clients.
To summarize, the AX can load balance traffic between clients and servers for IPv4-to-IPv4, IPv6-to-IPv6, or any mix of the two protocols. Regardless of which SLB-PT deployment scenario is used, you will still get the standard AX benefits.
Next, we'll show how to configure an AX to allow IPv6 clients to access IPv4 servers. First, we'll create the IPv4 servers, and then we must place those IPv4 servers into a Service Group. (In most "real world" deployments, these tasks will have already been done when the IPv4 VIP was set up.)
We'll spend the next few slides making sure our IPv4 VIP is up and running. Our lab has an existing IPv4 VIP that uses our existing IPv4 servers. Clients running IPv4 can access the IPv4 VIP. Client requests are load balanced across my two real servers, s1, and s2. Now let's see what that looks like in the AX GUI.
Launch a browser, and enter the IP of the AX's management port.
Enter the user name and password, and then click OK.
You're in.
Select Service.
SLB...
...and Virtual Server.
Then, click the plus sign to see the VIP information.
Click the plus again to display the real servers in the VIP. The green arrow shows the VIP is up. The two green arrows below show that the two real servers, s1 and s2, are also up. Lastly, we can verify that our IPv4 VIP is up by launching a new browser window and accessing the VIP.
Enter the IP for our VIP in the URL.
The A10 home page appears, displaying content from our IPv4 real servers and confirming that our VIP is up.
Now that we've verified our IPv4 VIP, this next section focuses on IPv6 configuration. We'll create an IPv4 SNAT pool and create our new IPv6 VIP.
The first part of this process is to create the Source NAT Pool, which is required to translate IPv6 client requests to IPv4 addresses.
Select the Config Mode tab.
Select Service.
Select IP Source NAT.
...and with the IPv4 tab selected, click the Add button.
The IPv4 Pool window appears.
Enter a name for the Source NAT Pool.
For example, "S-nat v6-to-v4", and then enter the Start and End IP addresses to define the range for the pool.
Then, enter the netmask.
...and click OK.
When finished setting up the Source NAT Pool, the next step is to create an IPv6 Virtual Server using your Service Group and an IPv4 SNAT Pool for the IPv4 real servers.
With the Config Mode tab selected, click SLB.
With the Virtual Server tab selected...
Click the Add button.
The Virtual Server create window appears.
Enter a name for the Virtual Server.
And then enter an IPv6 address.
Select the IPv6 radio button.
...and then click the Add button.
The Virtual Server Port window appears. Click the Port field. Enter the port number, such as port 80 for HTTP, and then click the Service Group drop-down menu...
...and select the Service Group.
Then, click the Source NAT Pool drop-down menu.
...and select the Source NAT Pool we just created. Save your changes by clicking
OK, and then click the flashing red Save button.
As we did before, we'll use the AX GUI to verify that our IPv6 and IPv4 VIPs both contain our IPv4 real servers, s1 and s2. Then, we'll use an IPv6 client to access our IPv6 VIP. Scroll up and select the Monitor Mode tab. Select Service.
SLB...
Our IPv4 and IPv6 VIPs appear. Click the plus sign to see the IPv6 VIP information.
And then click the plus again to display the real servers in the VIP. We can see that our IPv6 VIP contains real servers s1 and s2. Click the plus sign below to see the IPv4 VIP information.
And then click the plus again to display the real servers in the IPv4 VIP. As you can see, the IPv4 VIP also contains real servers s1 and s2 - just like the IPv6 VIP.
Next, we'll verify that our IPv6 VIP is up by launching a new browser and accessing the IPv6 VIP as an external user would. Enter the IPv6 VIP.
We'll enter 2001::12 and press Enter. The IPv6 client displays content from our IPv4 servers, even though we have accessed the content via the AX's IPv6 VIP. After just a few minutes of configuration, we've enabled an IPv6 web presence using the AX's SLB-PT feature, thus reducing the need to purchase additional equipment, lowering our management costs, and eliminating duplicated content.
Using the process described in this video, A10 has deployed the SLB-PT feature to provide IPv6-only services to its IPv4 servers. You can access the IPv6-only version of the A10 website at ipv6.a10networks.com. Using the same approach, A10 can quickly and easily set up a free demo to let you to see your own site as an IPv6-only website. For details, please contact us at inquire@a10networks.com.
This completes our Quick Class Video, but be sure to return to the A10 Networks website for additional videos on configuring the AX Server Load Balancer.