Load balancing applications on Nutanix Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

The move towards a multi-cloud and software-defined infrastructure stack has accelerated over the last few years. The use of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has been gathering pace for some time now. Progress Kemp has been fully on board with this trend since 2018.

Hyperconverged Infrastructure

HCI takes the use of server and storage virtualization that we have seen over the last decade to the next level. In non-converged modern infrastructure deployments, the compute, storage, and even networking components are usually virtualized or software defined. However, they are still separate entities that are deployed and managed separately.

In hyperconverged infrastructure deployments, the virtual machines, compute, storage, and networking are all software defined in a single software stack, and they can be deployed and managed as a single entity. HCI allows for the abstraction of infrastructure at a higher level. This abstraction is perfect for the multi-cloud and full-stack application delivery models now in use and will enable applications to be provisioned, migrated, updated, and accessed across multiple clouds and private data center locations.

Nutanix Solutions

Gartner and Forrester recognize Nutanix as a leader in HCI solutions. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud provides a complete HCI stack, and it supports multiple hardware providers and hypervisors. Some of the tools that are part of the Nutanix HCI stack are:

• Acropolis – Software stack that defines the compute, storage, and networking components of the hyperconverged infrastructure
• Prism – Stack management tool
• AHV – Nutanix hypervisor based on RedHat KVM
• Flow – Advanced networking & security services for AHV that provide network segmentation for applications
• Beam – Analytics on consumption patterns in multi-cloud environments, identifying underused resources to optimize costs
• Calm – Automation tool to make the infrastructure more agile via provisioning, scaling and management of applications
• Xtract – migration tools to allow VMs to be migrated from legacy systems to the Nutanix hyper converged infrastructure

LoadMaster and Nutanix

Progress Kemp LoadMaster is a Layer 4/7 load balancing application, accredited on Nutanix AVH, and together they provide the high availability, performance and security required by workloads running on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud. In addition to the core LoadMaster features, some of the benefits it brings to Nutanix solutions are:

• Kemp GEO – provides global server load balancing functionality (GSLB) to Nutanix deployments running across multiple clouds and hypervisors
• Web Application Firewall (WAF) – adds a layer of security to the applications running on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, with multi-layer inspection and security
• Pay for use – Metered Licensing allows the deployment of as many virtual LoadMaster instances as required across the whole multi-cloud Nutanix Enterprise Cloud deployment, with only throughput generating costs and not the number of load balancers deployed

Conclusion

Progress Kemp LoadMaster integrates perfectly with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud tools to deliver a seamless application delivery infrastructure. If you are deploying Nutanix’s multi-cloud enterprise platform, then contact Progress today to talk to our experts about how LoadMaster can enhance the deployment.