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Streaming Gateway Appliance (SGA) with Frame Remoting Protocol (FRP) 8

Streaming Gateway Appliance (SGA) with Frame Remoting Protocol (FRP) 8

In my previous blog posts I have outlined how the Frame™ Bring Your Own (BYO) Networking capability in Amazon Web Services (AWS) could be used to deploy a Frame account in a manner that would allow Frame-managed workload VMs to be connected to an existing private network. Recent addition of Frame Remoting Protocol (FRP) 8 has adjusted some of the ports and protocols used for workload connectivity. In this blog, I will update how the Frame Streaming Gateway Appliance (SGA) interacts with the new FRP8 networking environment.

News & Blog

WRITTEN BY

David Horvath

Senior Solutions Architect

November 15, 2022

TABLE OF CONTENT

Frame Remoting Protocol (FRP) 8

FRP8 is a new streaming protocol for how the end user’s browser connects to the Frame workload VM. The protocol leverages the WebRTC standard and UDP protocol to provide enhanced connectivity and additional capabilities and features. At the time of this writing, FRP8 is in Early Access and the enhancements and features are documented here. Since FRP8 is a pretty major switch from WebSockets (TCP) to WebRTC (UDP, by default), it has some networking implications that we will outline below.

Streaming Gateway Appliance (SGA)

The Streaming Gateway Appliance (SGA) is a reverse proxy, based on NGINX® software, that customers can deploy to allow Internet-based users to connect to Frame workload virtual machines (VMs) in a private networks. To support the new FRP8 protocol, the SGA was upgraded from SGA 2.X to SGA 3.X. Some of the differences in the two SGA versions are highlighted here.

For this blog, I will use a feature (Frame networking, private network with SGA) that automates the deployment of an SGA in order to explore the set of resources created. A generalized architecture of what is created is shown below.

Figure 1. Generalized SGA Deployment Architecture
Figure 1. Generalized SGA Deployment Architecture

Creating a Frame account

To create a SGA-based private account, a Frame administrator needs to select the “Frame Managed Networking” and the “Private network with SGA” radio buttons on the account creation page. Other information like cloud provider, data center, and network information is entered to create a private environment consistent with the rest of the enterprise network.

In the example below, I chose:

  • AWS Montreal for my demo environment
  • Two SGAs to show how load balancing will work
  • A CIDR block for my workstation network that would not overlap with the rest of my private network (10.100.0.0/18)
  • A smaller non-overlapping CIDR block for my SGA network (10.254.254.0/24) since the number of machines in this VPC would be much smaller.
Figure 2. Create Frame account with SGA
Figure 2. Create Frame account with SGA

Enable FRP8

Since FRP8 is an Early Access feature, it is not enabled by default on new Frame accounts. To enable FRP8, go to the account Dashboard > Settings > Session Settings and enable FRP8.

Figure 3. Enable FRP8
Figure 3. Enable FRP8

Successful FRP8 enablement can be verified by starting a session in the Sandbox and enabling "Session stats" which should show UDP and FRP8 as being in use.

Figure 4. Verify FRP8 in Session Statistics
Figure 4. Verify FRP8 in Session Statistics

What’s under the hood

Now that I have created a Frame-managed SGA/Private network account running FRP8, we can explore what was created inside my AWS account.

VPCs

The first thing that was created was a couple of Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with the requested network CIDR blocks.

Figure 5. VPCs Created
Figure 5. VPCs Created

The workload VPC is named with the Frame Vendor ID (in this case 48082) which is a unique ID within Frame Platform and the SGA VPC is named with the SGA ID (in this case, 1906) which identifies the SGA implementation inside Frame Platform. These two VPC’s are peered within AWS to allow for the free flow of private network traffic between them.

Figure 6. Peering connection created
Figure 6. Peering connection created

Subnets

Next, Frame creates subnets inside the VPCs. In this case, Frame creates three subnets per VPC to provide the flexibility and availability within the VPC.

Figure 7. Subnets
Figure 7.

NAT and Load balancer

The two VPCs will both need internet access:

  1. The SGA will need inbound traffic from the Frame end users.
  2. The Workload VPC needs outbound connections to Frame Platform.

Consequently, Internet Gateways are attached to both VPCs and a NAT GW will be attached to the Workload VPC.

Figure 8. NAT Gateway Configuration
Figure 8. NAT Gateway Configuration

For the SGAs, an AWS Load Balancer is provisioned to create a high availability SGA service.

Figure 9. AWS Load Balancer for SGA
Figure 9. AWS Load Balancer for SGA

Routing

The final steps are to route the traffic appropriately and assign security groups to the SGA and workload VMs.

In the workload VPC, the workload VMs are on “private networks” with outbound Internet traffic routed through the NAT Gateway while the traffic to the SGA VMs go out over the peering connection.

Figure 10. Private Network Routing
Figure 10. Private Network Routing

The NAT Gateway subnet will go directly to the Internet Gateway.

Figure 11. NAT Subnet Routing
Figure 11. NAT Subnet Routing

And the SGA subnet will have a route to the Internet via the NAT Gateway and a route to the workloads in the Workload VPC via the peering connection.

Figure 12. SGA Subnet Routing
Figure 12. SGA Subnet Routing

Security Groups

Security groups are set on the workload VMs to allow all traffic using specific TCP and UDP ports from the SGA subnet.

Figure 13. Workload VPC Inbound Security Group
Figure 13. Workload VPC Inbound Security Group

The SGA security group allows TCP port 8888 traffic from specific Frame Platform IP addresses; all traffic from the workload VPC subnets; and specific TCP and UDP ports from the Internet.

Figure 14. SGA VPC Inbound Security Group
Figure 13. Workload VPC Inbound Security Group

Conclusion

Automating the deployment of SGAs with FRP8 provides Frame administrators with the ability to quickly set up public access to private IP address spaces that utilizes the FRP8, based on the industry-standard streaming collaboration protocol WebRTC. As long as non-overlapping IP space is used, this configuration can be quickly integrated into the corporate private network via the installation of traditional VPN/private route tables.

About the Author

Dizzion

Dizzion was founded in 2011 with a visionary mission to redefine the way the world works.

In an era of legacy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Dizzion set out to challenge the status quo by making it simple for all customers to transform their workspace experience. By building a powerful automation and services platform on top of the VMware stack, Dizzion delivered virtual desktops as a service before Desktop as a Service (DaaS) even existed.

David Horvath

Senior Solutions Architect

William Wong is the VP of Service Delivery for Dizzion, responsible for service delivery (professional and managed services), solutions architecture, and support. He works actively with customers to transform their business and operations leveraging DaaS in a hybrid and multi-cloud world. Before joining Dizzion as part of the Frame spinout from Nutanix, William was Head of Enterprise Solutions at Frame and following Nutanix's acquisition of Frame in 2018, Director of Solutions Architecture (Frame) at Nutanix. Prior to his work in DaaS, William led the development and adoption of innovative Internet software solutions and services, including Internet-based credit card and check processing and eCommerce platforms. William spent over 30 years at Cancer Commons, NetDeposit, Hewlett-Packard, VeriFone, and multiple Internet, payment, and eCommerce startups in executive management, program management, engineering management, and executive advisory positions. William received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

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