How to download and deploy the Parallels RAS HALB appliance

High Availability Load Balancing (HALB) in Parallels RAS load balances RAS Secure Gateways. The load balancer runs inside the Parallels HALB appliance — a preconfigured virtual machine with the operating system and all required settings already in place.

Before you can configure a HALB Virtual Server in the RAS Console, you must download the HALB appliance and deploy it on a hypervisor. This article describes the prerequisites, the available appliance images, and the deployment steps for each tested hypervisor.

Prerequisites

• A firewall or router in front of HALB that preserves the source IP addresses of client devices.
• A hypervisor host on the same local network as the Parallels RAS Site. The HALB appliance has been tested on:
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • VMware ESXi / vCenter
  • Nutanix AHV
  • Scale Computing HyperCore
• Network connectivity for the ports listed in the HALB port reference — including VRRP (IP protocol 112) between HALB devices, and TCP/UDP 80 and 443 from HALB to the RAS Secure Gateways.
• At least two HALB devices per Virtual Server for redundancy (recommended).

Note: Other hypervisors may also work. They are supported on a best-effort basis only.

For the full and current list of prerequisites, see Prerequisites in the Parallels RAS Administrator's Guide.

Sizing recommendations

Size the HALB appliance according to the expected number of concurrent TCP sessions and the traffic profile:

Note: 4 GB of RAM is preferred for all profiles, as it provides an additional safety margin during prolonged high-load operation.

How to download the HALB appliance

1. Open the Parallels RAS download page.
2. Scroll to the Download Optional Server Components table and locate the Parallels Remote Application Server HALB Appliances row.
3. Download the image that matches your hypervisor:

   Hypervisor	Appliance image
   VMware ESXi / vCenter	HALB Appliance OVA
   Microsoft Hyper-V	HALB Appliance VHD
   Nutanix AHV	HALB Appliance QCOW2
   Scale Computing HyperCore	HALB Appliance QCOW2

Important: Use the HALB appliance version that matches your Parallels RAS version.

How to deploy the HALB appliance

VMware ESXi / vCenter

1. In the vSphere Client, deploy the downloaded OVA file using Deploy OVF Template.
2. Complete the wizard, selecting the target host, datastore, and the network that can reach the RAS Secure Gateways.
3. Power on the VM.

The VM is created with 2 vCPUs and 2048 MB of RAM. Adjust these values according to the sizing recommendations above.

Note: If the HALB v21.0 or v21.1 appliance fails to import or boot on vCenter 8 with errors such as An invalid "configSpec.guestId" argument was specified or No host is compatible with the virtual machine, use the v21.2 or later appliance, where this is fixed. Alternatively, power off the VM, open Edit Settings > VM Options, set Guest OS Version to Other Linux (64-bit), and power on the VM again.

Microsoft Hyper-V

1. Extract the downloaded VHD archive to a folder on the Hyper-V host.
2. In Hyper-V Manager, select New > Virtual Machine.
3. On the Specify Generation page, select Generation 1.
4. Assign memory according to the sizing recommendations above, and connect the network adapter to a virtual switch that can reach the RAS Secure Gateways.
5. On the Connect Virtual Hard Disk page, select Use an existing virtual hard disk and browse to the extracted VHD file.
6. Finish the wizard, set the number of virtual processors in the VM settings, and start the VM.

Important: The HALB appliance requires a Generation 1 VM. A Generation 2 VM does not boot from the supplied VHD.

Nutanix AHV

1. In the Prism Element console, go to Settings > Image Configuration > Create Image > Upload a file, and select the downloaded QCOW2 image.
2. Wait until the image status changes to ACTIVE.
3. Go to VM > Create VM.
4. Under Boot Configuration, select Legacy BIOS.
5. Click Add New Disk and set:
   • Type: DISK
   • Operation: Clone from Image Service
   • Image: the QCOW2 image uploaded in step 1
6. Click Add, and complete the VM configuration.
7. Go to VM > VM name > Power On > Launch Console.

Scale Computing HyperCore

1. Go to Control Center > Media > Upload, and upload the downloaded QCOW2 image.
2. Click Create VM.
3. Set Boot Type to BIOS.
4. Under Drive, select Attach Uploaded Drive and choose the uploaded QCOW2 image.
5. Remove all other drives except the one attached in the previous step.
6. Click Create, and start the VM.

How to complete the first-boot configuration

Open the VM console after the appliance starts for the first time:

1. Select DHCP (default) or Static IP configuration.
2. If you selected Static, enter the IP address, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS servers.
3. Optionally, configure mailbox notifications.
4. Wait until the appliance reports that it is ready for configuration from the RAS Console.

Important: If you use DHCP, create a DHCP reservation for the appliance. If the HALB device IP address changes when the lease expires, the device stops working in its Virtual Server.

The Advanced menu in the appliance console provides the following options:

• Networking — reconfigure the network settings of the device.
• Rescan — refresh the state of the appliance services, which is not updated automatically.
• Reset — reset the appliance configuration, for example, to recover from an inconsistent state or before adding the device to a different Virtual Server.

Next steps

Deploy at least one more HALB appliance for redundancy, and then configure a HALB Virtual Server in the RAS Console. See Adding a HALB virtual server.

Additional information

• High availability load balancing (HALB)
• HALB prerequisites
• Deploying a Parallels HALB appliance
• HALB port reference