NSX 4.1 Application Platform (NAPP) – Part 4 NAPP Scale-Out

Welcome to the final and Part 4 of the blog series on NSX Application Platform where we demonstrate NAPP Scale-Out.

NAPP scale-out is supported only on Advanced form factor (which we performed in the previous article) and also requires the TKC / Kubernetes cluster to be scaled out with the appropriate number of worker nodes.

If you were not following along, please check out the previous parts of the series below:

NSX 4.1 Application Platform (NAPP) – Part 1 Environment Setup

NSX 4.1 Application Platform (NAPP) – Part 2 Deployment

NSX 4.1 Application Platform (NAPP) – Part 3 Form Factor Upgrade

Let’s get started:

Scaling out the TKC Cluster

As discussed above, we require the TKC cluster to be scaled out with the appropriate number of worker nodes to support the scale out operation of NAPP core services. The below table lists the minimum number of TKC worker nodes required for NAPP scale-out.

Before we proceed, let’s ensure that the NAPP dashboard is healthy and we don’t have any open alarms.

Let’s scale-out the TKC cluster to five (5) worker nodes. For this we login to the supervisor cluster, switch the context to the supervisor namespace “vxdc01-napp”

Note : Considering the worker node requirements (16 vCPU / 64 GB RAM) to support NAPP Advanced form factor, five is the maximum worker count supported in my home lab. This means that we can scale out the messaging and metrics services and not the data storage service.

Let’s open up the cluster manifest for editing. Changing the replica value under the nodePools to 5 will trigger a scale-out operation of worker nodes.

We see two new worker nodes getting provisioned, this process takes some time to complete.

While we wait, let’s have a quick coffee and once we are back, the scale-out operation should be completed.

Let’s check the NAPP dashboard to confirm that the new worker nodes are reflected in the console.

At this moment, we are all good to perform NAPP scale-out.

Performing NAPP scale-out

As discussed above, NAPP scale-out is supported only on Advanced form factor. The option will be greyed-out when tried from a Standard NAPP form factor.

NAPP platform should be healthy without any open alarms. If not, the workflow prohibits from performing the scale-out, as shown below:

In order to perform the scale-out, navigate to System -> NSX Application Platform -> Actions -> Scale-Out

With the current TKC worker node count of 5, we can scale out the messaging and metrics services.

Clicking on “Scale Out” will begin the scale out operation.

We see additional replicas of kafka messaging broker and the metrics services getting deployed.

and after a while, the scale-out operation gets completed.

Now let’s check the kafka messaging components before and after the scale-out.

Before scale-out

After scale-out

and the metrics components before and after the scale-out

Before scale-out

After scale-out

Finally, let’s verify the core services platform health and ensure there are no open alarms.

If you want to scale-out NAPP further, click on Actions -> Scale Out and add the appropriate number of TKC worker nodes suggested in the workflow. For eg: adding two more TKC workers (total 7) can further scale out the Kafka messaging and metrics services.

Now, that’s a wrap!!!

We covered a lot of NAPP in this 4-part blog series covering the environment setup, vSphere with Tanzu and NSX ALB configuration, NAPP pre-requisites, deployment of TKC clusters, deployment of NAPP, NAPP form factor upgrade and finally NAPP scale-out.

I hope this has been an interesting and informative blog series. Please reach out to me via Twitter or Linkedin if you have suggestions / recommendations.

See you soon with a new NSX topic.

Thanks for reading