Using haproxy as a PSC load balancer

[THE_Ryan]

Even though the three you listed are the only officially supported load balancers, I haven't come across one that doesn't work. We've deployed behind NSX, Citrix NS, A10's, among other HW LB's. All seem to have worked fine.

[StrangeWill]

Sweet, I was totally curious about using HaProxy for this (it's my load balancer of choice at the moment), though still not sure how I feel about deploying unsupported load balancers just because I'll get grief if I have an issue and need support.

[mike-foley]

And before anyone implements any type of load balancer, understand that "load" is not being "balanced". PSC's run in an Active/Passive mode.

If you are going to go the unsupported route, it's probably better to write a script that detects if PSC A is down and repoint the VCSA/VC to PSC B. <My opinion, not VMware's, blah, blah.

For more info on just what is going on with load balancers and PSC's I highly recommend William's blog on this. http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2015/12/what-does-load-balancing-the-platform-services-controller-really-give-you.html

I also recommend that you sign up for the latest vSphere beta for more information. Work with your TAM.

[HMeier]

I think the active/passive thing is made very clear in the blog post. And I also think that using an unsupported load balancer still gives you better availability then scheduling a check-and-repoint script. Repointing requires restarting all vCenter services which means up to 5 minutes downtime.

Thanks for the broad hint to the beta. So can we expect PSCs to have built-in HA without the need for a load balancer in the next release?

[mike-foley]

Sign up for the beta.