Load Balancers

Infrastructure -> Load Balancers

Overview

Morpheus can provision VM or Container HaProxy Load Balancers, Amazon Elastic and Application Load Balancers, Azure Load Balancers, and integrates with several external Load Balancers, including F5, A10, Citrix, and AVI.

Once created or integrated, Load Balancers are available as an option to be added during provision time or post-provisioning.

Once a Load Balancer is added to an instance, you can manually scale or configure auto-scaling based on thresholds or schedules, and burst across clouds with cloud priority.

Note

HaProxy VM Load Balancer option, Load Balancer detail pages, Balance Mode, Sticky Mode and Shared VIP address option are available in Morpheus 2.11.3+.

In the Load Balancers page there are two sections:

Load Balancers
View or edit existing Load Balancers, add new Load Balancers.
Virtual Servers
View and link to Instances that are attached to load balancers.

Load Balancers

The Load Balancers tab list currently available Load Balancers, which you can select, edit or delete, and is where you can create new or integrate with external Load Balancers.

Add a new Load Balancer

Select + LOAD BALANCER, chose an option, and fill in the required information:

A10 (aXAPI v3)
  • API Host
  • API Port
  • Username
  • Password
  • Internal IP
  • Public IP
  • VIP Address
  • VIP Port
Amazon ALB
  • Scheme
  • Internal
  • Internet-Facing
  • Amazon Subnets (Select + to add additional) * Specify the subnets to enable for your load balancer. You can specify only one subnet per Availability Zone. You must specify subnets from at least two Availability Zones to increase the availability of your load balancer.
  • Amazon Security Groups (Select + to add additional)
AVI
  • API Host
  • API Port
  • Username
  • Password
  • Internal IP
  • Public IP
  • VIP Address
  • VIP Port
Azure Load Balancer
  • Cloud
  • Resource Group * Populated from cloud selection
Citrix NetScaler
  • API Host
  • API Port
  • Username
  • Password
F5 BigIP (v11.4+)
  • API Host
  • API Port
  • Username
  • Password
  • Management URL
FortiADC
  • API HOST
  • API PORT
  • USERNAME
  • PASSWORD
  • INTERFACE (synced on auth)
HaProxy Container (Internal, will create a HaProxy container, must have available docker host to provision to)
  • Group
  • Cloud
  • Name
  • Description
  • Plan * Select the size of HaProxy container to be provisioned

Upon saving your new Load Balancer will be added to the Load Balancers list and available in the Load Balancer dropdown in the Provisioning Wizard Automation Section for Instance Types that have scaling enabled.

Load Balancer Detail Pages

In the main Load Balancer page, select an existing Load Balancer to go to that Load Balancers Details Page, which lists Stats, Settings, Actions and Virtual Servers for that load balancer.

Orchestrating Load Balancers

A large part of application orchestration and automation involves tying various web services and backend services into different load balancer configurations. If the automation tool is unable to communicate or integrate with this aspect of your infrastructure, a lot of gaps will be created in the full orchestrated flow of application deployment. This is why Morpheus provides deep integration with load balancers and explicit definitions with catalog items as to how they are connected to provisioned instances. Some of the functionality includes:

  • Public Cloud Load Balancer Support
  • Private Cloud Load Balancer Support
  • Port Type definitions (Profiles like HTTP/HTTPS or UDP)
  • SSL Certificate Management and SSL Certificate Upload
  • SSL Passthrough or Forced Redirect

Not only does Morpheus have an ability to provision HAProxy based load balancer containers for easy consumption in development environments, but also has direct tie ins with several Load Balancer Types:

  • F5 BigIP
  • A10
  • Netscaler
  • AVI
  • Amazon ELB
  • Amazon ALB
  • Azure Load Balancer
  • Fortinet
  • Openstack Octavia
  • HA Proxy

Morpheus exposes configuration options during provisioning of an Instance relevant and common to each supported LB Integration. In some cases, Morpheus also provides direct management and sync support for VIP configurations on the various Load Balancers (such as F5, and AVI), However in a day to day orchestrated workflow this would not be the ideal means by which a user should consume load balancer services.

By tying the Load Balancer associations into the provisioning of instances and the definition of the instance catalog item, the lifecycle of the VIP can more easily be maintained throughout the lifecycle of whatever application may be deployed.

Setting up an Instance for Load Balancer Consumption

Several of the provided Morpheus instance types are ready to go with load balancer orchestration out of the box (Apache, Nginx, Tomcat, Node.js, etc). It is also fairly easy to extend existing generic instance types during provisioning to be tied to load balancers or to set up said catalog items in advanced for such functionality.

When creating a custom Instance Type (in Provisioning -> Library), one can define a list of exposed ports that the node type within the instance exposes. When defining these exposed ports it prompts for a Name, Port Number, and LB Type. The LB Type is what enables load-balancer functionality. This can either be HTTP,HTTPS, or TCP. This specification helps build the correct profile for the VIP as well as setup the appropriate types of Health Monitors within the target load balancer integration.

Now, when a user consumes this custom instance type (either through single instance provisioning or full application blueprint provisioning), a section appears in the Automation phase of provisioning. Each port that is defined that exposes a load-balancer gets a dropdown to choose which load balancer integration attach to the exposed port and various prompts become available.

These prompts control features ranging from target VIP Address to selecting an SSL Certificate to be applied to the VIP. These SSL Certificates will even go so far as to create SSL Profiles in integrations for things like an F5 automatically for the application. There are also external integrations for SSL Certificate management with Venafi which allows for the consumption of certificates managed by that external system.

Once the instance is provisioned, as part of the final phase, the load balancer configuration will be applied and maintained on the instance. This association can be manipulated after the fact via the “Scale” tab found on the Instance Detail page.

Another benefit to associating load-balancers this way is that the pool members are automatically maintained during scaling events, either via auto-scaling thresholds or manual node additions / removals.

F5 Load Balancers

Add F5 Load Balancer

../../_images/F5_addf5lb.gif

To add a F5 Load Balancer Integration:

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure -> Load Balancers

  2. Select + ADD

  3. Select F5 BigIP

  4. Fill in the following:

    GROUP

    Select the Group the Load Balancer will be available for

    CLOUD

    Select the Cloud the Load Balancer will be available for

    NAME

    Name of the Load Balancer in Morpheus

    DESCRIPTION

    Identifying information displayed on the Load Balancer list page.

    VISIBILITY

    Define Multi-Tenant permissions

    API HOST

    IP or resolvable hostname url.

    API PORT

    Typically 8443

    USERNAME

    API user

    PASSWORD

    API user password

    MANAGEMENT URL

    Example: https://10.30.20.31:8443/xui/

    Advanced Options (optional)
    • VIRTUAL NAME
    • POOL NAME
    • SERVER NAME

  5. Save Changes

F5 Details Page

Instances attached to an F5 will be listed in the Virtual servers tab. Virtual servers can also be manually added in this section.

Add Virtual Server

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure -> Load Balancers
  2. Select F5 Integration name to drill into the detail page
  3. Select + ADD in the VIRTUAL SERVERS tab
  4. Fill in the following:
    • NAME
      Name of the Virtual Server in Morpheus
    • DESCRIPTION
      Description of the Virtual Server in Morpheus
    • Enabled
      Uncheck to keep the configuration but disable F5 availability in Morpheus
    • VIP TYPE
      • Standard
      • Forwarding (Layer 2)
      • Forwarding (IP)
      • Performance (HTTP)
      • Performance (Layer 4)
      • Stateless
      • Reject
      • DHCP
      • Internal
      • Message Routing
    • VIP HOSTNAME
      Enter Hostname of the VIP (optional)
    • VIP ADDRESS
      Eneter IP address for the VIP
    • VIP PORT
      Enter post used for the VIP
    • SOURCE ADDRESS
      Enter Virtual Server source address
    • PROTOCOL
      tcp, udp, or sctp
    • PROFILES Search for and select from available PROFILES
    • POLICIES
      Search for and select from available POLICIES
    • IRULES
      Search for and select from available RUEL SCRIPTS
    • PERSISTENCE
      • cookie
      • dest-addr
      • global-settings
      • hash
      • msrdp
      • sip
      • source-addr
      • ssl
      • universal
    • DEFAULT POOL
      Select from available POOLS
  5. Select SAVE CHANGES

Policies

Policies will be synced and listed in the Policies tab. These policies will be available options when creating Virtual Servers.

Pools

Create Pool

NAME
Name of the POOL in Morpheus
DESCRIPTION
Description of the POOL in Morpheus
BALANCE MODE
  • Round Robin
  • Least Connections
SERVICE PORT
Specify SERVICE PORT for the POOL
MEMBERS
Search for and select from available NODES
MONITORS
Search for and select from available Monitors

Profiles

SSL Profiles are synced and and will be created when an SSL Certificate is assigned in the Load balancer section when provisioning or editing a Load balancer on an Instance.

Monitors

Create Monitorr

NAME
Name of the MONITOR in Morpheus
DESCRIPTION
Description of the MONITOR in Morpheus
PARENT MONITOR
Select from available MONITORS
DESTINATION
Specify Destination, such a *:443. Default is *:*
INTERVAL
Specify Monitor Interval. Default is 5
TIMEOUT
Specify Monitor Timeout. Default is 15
MONITOR CONFIG
Enter monitor config.

Nodes

Create Node

NAME
Name of the NODE in Morpheus
DESCRIPTION
Description of the NODE in Morpheus
ADDRESS
Enter node address
MONITOR
Select from available MONITORS
SERVICE PORT
Specify SERVICE PORT for the NODE

Rule Scripts

Rule Scripts will be synced and listed in the RULE SCRIPTS tab. These rules will be available options when creating Virtual Servers.