VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer: ICM plus Troubleshooting and Operations Fast Track [V20.x]

This five-day, extended hour course introduces you to advanced VMware NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ (Avi) solutions management skills. In this course, you will learn to install, configure, and manage a VMware NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ solution. Also, you will learn advanced knowledge, skills, and tools to achieve competence in operating and troubleshooting the NSX Advanced Load Balancer solutions.

Who Can Benefit

• Experienced system administrators or network administrators
• Network professionals who have experience working with NSX Advanced Load Balancer and are responsible for troubleshooting and operating Application Delivery Controllers solutions

Skills Gained

• By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:
• Describe the NSX Advanced Load Balancer architecture
• Describe the NSX Advanced Load Balancer components and main functions
• Explain the NSX Advanced Load Balancer key features and benefits
• Deploy and configure the NSX Advanced Load Balancer infrastructure within private or public clouds using Write and No Access Cloud Connectors
• Explain, deploy, and configure Service Engines
• Explain and configure local load balancing constructors such as virtual services, pools, health monitors, and related components
• Understand and modify application behavior through profiles, policies, and DataScripts
• Configure advanced services such as global server load balancing
• Describe how to use NSX Advanced Load Balancer REST API interfaces and related automation capabilities
• Describe and configure NSX Advanced Load Balancer application and infrastructure monitoring
• Become familiar with NSX Advanced Load Balancer troubleshooting tools and steps to solve the problems.
• Establish and apply a structured troubleshooting approach and methodology
• Understand built-in mechanisms available for NSX Advanced Load Balancer monitoring
• Identify, analyze, and troubleshoot problems related to the NSX Advanced Load Balancer infrastructure, including control and data plane components
• Identify, analyze, and troubleshoot problems related to application components such as Virtual Services, Pools, and related components

Course Content

Outline

• Course Introduction
• Introduction and course logistics
• Course objectives

• Introduction to NSX Advanced Load Balancer
• Introduce NSX Advanced Load Balancer
• Discuss NSX Advanced Load Balancer use cases and benefits
• Explain NSX Advanced Load Balancer architecture and components
• Explain the management, control, data, and consumption planes and their respective functions

• Virtual Services Configuration Concepts
• Explain Virtual Service components
• Explain Virtual Service types
• Explain and configure basic Virtual Service components such as Application Profiles, Network Profiles

• Profiles and Policies
• Explain Advanced Virtual Service creation
• Explain and deep dive on Application Profiles and Types such as L4, DNS, Syslog, and HTTP
• Explain and configure advanced application HTTP Profile options
• Recognize Network Profiles and Types
• Explain and configure SSL Profiles and Certificates
• Explain and Configure HTTP and DNS policies

• Pools Configuration Concepts
• Explain on Pools configuration options
• Describe available Load Balancing algorithms
• Explain multiple Health Monitor types
• Explain multiple Persistence Profiles
• Explain and configure Pool Groups

• Modifying Application Behavior
• Design and apply application solutions leveraging application profiles
• Design and apply application solutions leveraging Network and HTTP Policies and DataScripts
• Explain DataScript fundamentals
• Explain and leverage NSX Advanced Load Balancer analytics to understand application behavior
• Describe and configure Client SSL Certificate Validation
• Describe and configure Virtual Service DDoS, Rate Limiting, and Throttling capabilities
• Modify Network Profiles properties such as TCP connection properties
• Design and apply application solutions leveraging Persistence Profiles

• NSX Advanced Load Balancer Infrastructure Architecture
• Deep dive on the management, control, data, and consumption planes and functions
• Describe Control Plane Clustering and High Availability
• Describe Controller Process Sharing
• Describe Controller Sizing
• Describe Service Engine CPU and NIC Architecture
• Explain Tenants
• Recognize the configure properties of Service Engine Groups
• Explain Service Engine Group High Availability Modes
• Describe and configure Active/Standby High Availability Mode
• Describe and configure Elastic HA High Availability Mode (Active/Active, N+M)
• Explain Service Engine Failure Detection and Self-Healing
• Describe Service Engine as a Router
• Identify Virtual Service scale out options, such as Layer 2 (Native), Layer 3 (BGP), and DNS-based

• Introduction to Cloud Connector
• Introduce VMware vCloud Connector®
• Review vCloud Connector integration modes
• Introduce vCloud Connector types

• Install, Configure and Manage NSX Advanced Load Balancer in No-Access Cloud
• Explain No Access Cloud concepts
• Configure No Access Cloud integration
• Explain and Configure Linux Server Cloud
• Describe the Advanced Configuration options available in Bare-Metal (Linux Server Cloud)

• Install, Configure and Manage NSX Advanced Load Balancer in VMware Environment: Cloud Configuration
• Introduce VMware integration options
• Explain and configure VMware No Access Cloud Connector
• Explain and configure VMware Write Access Cloud Connector
• Describe VMware Write with NSX Access Cloud Connector
• Describe VMware NSX integration

• AWS Cloud Configuration
• Describe NSX Advanced Load Balancer Public Cloud integrations
• Explain and demonstrate AWS Public Cloud Integration

• DNS Foundations
• Review, discuss, and explain DNS fundamentals
• Describe NSX Advanced Load Balancer DNS and IPAM providers

• Global Server Load Balancing
• Introduce Global Server Load Balancing Concepts and Benefits
• Explain and configure NSX Advanced Load Balancer infrastructure
• Explain and configure DNS Virtual Service components
• Explain and configure GSLB Service Engine Group
• Describe and configure GSLB Sites
• Explain and configure basic GSLB Services to include pools and health monitors
• Describe GSLB Service Load Balancing algorithms
• Explain and configure Data and Control Plane-based Health Monitors
• Describe GSLB Health Monitor Proxy

• Events and Alerts
• Describe NSX Advanced Load Balancer Events
• Describe and configure NSX Advanced Load Balancer Alerts
• Describe NSX Advanced Load Balancer monitoring capabilities, leveraging SNMP, Syslog, and Email

• Introduction to NSX Advanced Load Balancer Rest API
• Introduce NSX Advanced Load Balancer REST API interface
• Describe REST API Object Schema
• Explain and interact with REST API interface, leveraging browser and command line utility
• Explain Swagger-based API documentation

• Introduction to NSX Advanced Load Balancer Troubleshooting
• Explain NSX Advanced Load Balancer troubleshooting concepts
• Describe and leverage Virtual Service Traffic Logs
• Describe and leverage Virtual Service Security Insights
• Understand and utilize Health Score concepts
• Explain and leverage application metrics and analytics
• Explain and leverage packet capture and CLI utilities for application troubleshooting
• Leverage UI, CLI, and useful log files to perform control plane troubleshooting

• Infrastructure Troubleshooting
• Describe and perform general vCloud Connector troubleshooting
• Describe and analyze vCloud Connector state
• Leverage case studies to troubleshoot vCloud Connector
• Describe and troubleshoot NSX Cloud Connector integration
• Leverage case studies to troubleshoot NSX Cloud Connector
• Describe and troubleshoot Linux Server Cloud Connector integration
• Describe and troubleshoot OpenStack Cloud Connector integration
• Leverage case studies to troubleshoot OpenStack Cloud Connector
• Describe and troubleshoot AWS and Azure Cloud Connector integrations

• Troubleshooting NSX Advanced Load Balancer Service Engines and Advanced Troubleshooting
• Explain general Service Engine infrastructure
• Explain and leverage analytics, health score, and metrics for Service Engine troubleshooting
• Explain and leverage Events and Alerts for Service Engine troubleshooting
• Leverage CLI for accessing Service Engine
• Analyze Service Engine logs offline with Tech Support utility and collecting core dumps
• Leverage CLI and useful log files for Service Engine Data Plane troubleshooting
• Leverage CLI to capture packets for advanced datapath analysis

• Monitoring NSX Advanced Load Balancer
• Explain and configure SNMP-based monitoring
• Explain and configure REST API-based monitoring
• Describe and leverage 3rd-party integration with monitoring tools like Splunk
• Leverage 3rd-party REST API monitoring extensions like Prometheus
• Describe and leverage VMware integrations like VMware vRealize® Network Insight™ for monitoring