In today’s application-driven economy, downtime and sluggish app performance aren’t merely inconveniences—they directly hurt business outcomes.
Legacy load balancers compound these issues. As days go by, issues multiply, tickets stack up, and blame gets tossed among network, application, and server teams. Everyone’s under suspicion, yet accountability is elusive. While numerous issues can hinder application performance, the network often has to defend itself first as not being the main culprit.
In contrast to hardware appliances, VMware NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ is more than an upgrade. This software-defined solution revolutionizes your load balancing infrastructure. Combined with comprehensive visibility, you can troubleshoot issues faster and more efficiently.
From Fragmented Visibility to Comprehensive End-to-End Insights
A plethora of factors, from server glitches to network problems and application issues, can degrade application performance. Effective troubleshooting demands end-to-end visibility—something legacy load balancers falter at. In contrast, NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ grants you a comprehensive view of the end-to-end latency from networks, servers, to apps through a user-friendly interface.
Slow application response is a prevalent issue and a challenge to troubleshoot. Users anticipate swift app responsiveness. NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ offers graphical insights into end-to-end latency, revealing detailed metrics like Client RTT, Server RTT, App response time, and Data transfer time. End to end latency insights ensure effective troubleshooting. Furthermore, sharing app response codes to your app team becomes straightforward.
Sometimes, a singular issue, like a cloud disruption or an underlying platform problem, affects multiple applications. NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ provides a holistic view of all the load balanced applications in a single dashboard across data centers and clouds for both monolithic and container-based applications. Thus, you can promptly pinpoint if a single issue affects multiple apps. Additionally, it provides an overall health score for each app, based on performance, resource usage, anomalies, and security metrics.
With NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™, no more finger-pointing; everyone has a clear view of what’s happening, and you can also enable self-service or visibility for the application team.
From Endlessly Searching for the Needle in a Haystack to AI Assisted Insights
Slow applications become a perpetual nightmare. IT admins find themselves sifting through an overwhelming sea of logs or TCP dumps, searching for the elusive needle in a haystack. Pinpointing app performance issues becomes a Herculean task, leading to more going in circles.
Being in the critical pathway of all traffic, legacy load balancers simply drop the wealth of information to the ground. But the NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ changes the narrative. It proactively identifies significant logs, screens them, correlates the data, prioritizes issues, and provides clear explanations. It automatically logs common network and application errors under the umbrella of significant logs. These significant logs may also include entries for lesser issues, such as transactions that were completed successfully but took an abnormally long time. Errors may include any of the following: HTTP errors, such as server or 4xx and 5xx errors, Network errors, such as aborted connections, abnormal latency, or out of order packets. In addition, NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ uses AI techniques like machine learning, pattern recognition, traffic matching, and per app modeling to draw insights from data.
It is akin to having an AI-powered troubleshooting ally. Instead of searching endlessly for important logs to immediate significant logs on your tips.
From Blind to a Config Change to Context of a Config Change
Configuration changes and updates are routine in any load balancing environment. Whenever a configuration change is made, it’s a game of Russian roulette. The IT team can’t identify whether the configuration change is the cause of the application performance problem.
Ever wondered if a recent configuration change led to anomalies, higher latency, or errors? NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ removes guesswork. It offers a visual representation of latency at different points in time mapped to config changes icons, making it easy to see the impact, positive or negative. It may not be exactly causal but provides valuable clues of correlation for further root cause analysis.
From Scaling Challenges to Taking the Reins
As the organization scales, more applications and clouds are added to the mix. Complexity increases, but resources remain limited, and the team can feel overwhelmed.
If legacy load balancers are your bane, it’s time for liberation. Adopt the NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™. Watch as the pointing fingers cease, troubleshooting turns efficient, and your IT squad evolves into a nimble powerhouse.
Meet the Author
Pankaj leads product and solutions marketing and go to market strategy for NSX at VMware. He advises CIOs and business leaders for technology and business model transitions. In prior roles at Cisco and Citrix, he led networking, cybersecurity and software solution marketing.
