Deploying the vNIOS Instance with High Availability

After uploading the vNIOS image, you are ready to create a VM instance and deploy it with HA (high availability) from the Azure CLI as discussed in this section. The capability is introduced in NIOS version 9.0.4.

For the settings that you must configure in NIOS to set up HA, refer to HA related topics under Configuring a Grid in the Infoblox NIOS Documentation.

To deploy a vNIOS instance with HA, complete the following steps on each node of the HA pair from the Azure CLI:

1. Create a managed disk by running the following command in the Azure CLI if a disk is not yet created:
   
   az disk create --name <managed_disk_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name> --size <disk_size> --sku Premium_LRS --source "https://<resource_group_name>.blob.core.windows.net/<storage_container_blob_name>/<vhd_image_name>" --source-storage-account-id "/subscriptions/<subscription_name>/resourceGroups/<resource_group_name>/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/<storage_account_name>" --os-type Linux
   
   Note: For better performance, specify Premium_LRSas thesku.
   
   Example:
   az disk create --name managed-disk1 --resource-group rg-east-01 --size 250 --sku Premium_LRS --source "https://rgeastcloudautomation.blob.core.windows.net/images/nios-image.vhd" --source-storage-account-id "/subscriptions/1abcd012-2abc-123a-4abc-12a345678ab1/resourceGroups/rg-east-01/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/rgeastcloudautomation" --os-type Linux
   
   

2. Create three network interfaces for MGMT, LAN1, and HA by specifying the resource group, subnet, and virtual network names corresponding to the interfaces. Ensure that the HA interface is assigned to the same subnet as the LAN1 interface.
   
   az network nic create --name <NIC-1_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name> --subnet <subnet_name> --vnet-name <virtual_network_name>
az network nic create --name <NIC-2_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name> --subnet <subnet_name> --vnet-name <virtual_network_name>
az network nic create --name <NIC-3_name> --resource-group <resource_group_name> --subnet <subnet_name> --vnet-name <virtual_network_name>
   
   Example:
   az network nic create --name nic-3 --resource-group rg-east-01 --subnet subnet-128 --vnet-name vn-east-qa-00
az network nic create --name nic-4 --resource-group rg-east-01 --subnet subnet-128 --vnet-name vn-east-qa-00
az network nic create --name nic-5 --resource-group rg-east-01 --subnet subnet-128 --vnet-name vn-east-qa-00
   
   

3. Add a secondary IP address to the HA interface of one of the HA nodes:
   
   az network nic ip-config create --name <ipconfig-name> --nic-name <HA-nic-name> --private-ip-address <secondary_IP> --private-ip-address-version IPv4 --resource-group <group_name> --subnet <subnet> --vnet-name <VNET_name>
   
   Example:
   az network nic ip-config create --name ipconfig2 --nic-name hanic03 --private-ip-address 172.29.128.21 --private-ip-address-version IPv4 --resource-group rg-east-01 --subnet subnet-128 --vnet-name vn-east-qa-00
   
   Note that Azure allows you to use a public IP address to access the HA Grid from outside of the private virtual network. To configure, associate the public IP address with the secondary IP address.

4. Create a NIOS instance by attaching the network interfaces and the managed disk to it. Provide the following details:
   
   az vm create --resource-group <resource_group_name> --name <instance_name> --nics <NIC-1_name> <NIC-2_name> <NIC-3_name> --attach-os-disk "/subscriptions/<Subscription_ID>/resourcegroups/<resource_group_name>/providers/
Microsoft.Compute/disks/<managed_disk_name>" --size <VM_shape> --location <location_name> --os-type Linux
   
   Example:
   az vm create --resource-group rg-east-01 --name instance1 --nics nic-3 nic-4 nic-5 --attach-os-disk "/subscriptions/3b9ac093-9baa-421e-8ee2-62f682759ca4/resourcegroups/rg-east-01/providers/Microsoft.Compute/disks/managed-disk1" --size Standard_DS12_V2 --location eastus --os-type Linux