A10 Networks Thunder Azure

vThunder for Azure is a fully operational, software-only version of the ACOS Series Server Load Balancer (SLB), or Application Delivery Controller (ADC) device. vThunder is a virtual appliance, yet it retains most of the functionality available on the hardware-based ACOS appliances. Managing vThunder is the same as managing a hardware-based ACOS device, and vThunder has the same CLI configurations and GUI presentation. The networking configuration for vThunder is also similar to a hardware-based ACOS device. With the release of the 64-bit image, vThunder for Azure can support up to eight virtual CPUs.

A10 offers the following standards A2-A4 for all images: A2 (2 cores, 3.5 GB mem), A3 (4 cores, 7 GB mem), A4 (8 cores, 14 GB mem)

When first launching a new vThunder instance in an Azure environment, you must Configure “ip address dhcp” before performing other configurations because there is no predefined DHCP in the start-up config file. (A10 issue: 231956) If you change the endpoint port number in the Azure portal, make sure to clear your Internet browser's cache before attempting to navigate to the vThunder GUI. If not cleared, the browser will use the previously saved public port and will fail to access the vThunder GUI. (A10 issue: 231974) vThunder for Azure runs in single-interface mode. Therefore, both SLB and management traffic will be sent to the same interface. Virtual ports from 0–1023 can be used for data traffic, and virtual ports 1024 and higher can be used for management traffic. Once an IP is assigned to the vThunder management port, subsequent changes to this IP are not supported.

Accessing the vThunder GUI in a single-IP environment, such as Azure’s cloud, requires some additional configuration of the network settings. In ordinary environments where you are not limited to a single IP address, you could assign two or more separate IP addresses to the vThunder device to separate different types of traffic. One IP could be used for VIP traffic, and the other IP could be used for traffic to the Web GUI. However, when deployed in the Azure cloud, vThunder can only support one IP interface. Therefore, you must configure the vThunder to use the primary interface IP to handle all different types of traffic (i.e., network traffic, management traffic, and Web GUI traffic). Instead of routing traffic using separate IP addresses, the traffic can be sent to the proper destination by configure separate virtual ports.