In last post of this series I discussed about my lab setup. In this post we will learn how to deploy and configure NSX.
Last year I did a complete lab on NSX and posted few blog articles on installation and configuration stuffs. So in this post I will not go into much details on NSX stuffs. If you are new to NSX then make sure you read VMware documentation on NSX deployment.
Also you can view below articles from my blogs on NSX.
1: Installing and Configuring NSX
3: Preparing Esxi Hosts and Cluster
4: Configure VXLAN on the ESXi Hosts
Lets first start with deploying NSX.
Nothing fancy here. NSX deployment involves same steps as deploying any other virtual appliance. Here is a slideshow for deployment steps.
Once deployment completes and NSX manager boots up, login to the appliance by typing https://NSX-fqdn/. Credentials are admin/pwd set during deployment.
NSX Basic Configuration
Before registering NSX with vCenter, add the service account (best practice) via which NSX will be talking to vCenter. To add the service account, login to vSphere Web Client and navigate to Administration > Users and Groups and select Groups and locate Administrators group and add the account as shown below.
Login to NSX manager and from home page, click on Manage vCenter Registration.
Select NSX management service and edit Lookup Service URL and supply lookup service host and SSO admin details.
Edit vCenter server details and supply vCenter IP adress/FQDN and account via which NSX will communicate with vCenter server. Typically this will be a service account (you can also use administrator@sso-domain for this)
Make sure lookup service and vCenter server status is showing as conencted and inventory sync time is current.
Important: At this point NSX is registered with vCenter server but the NSX plugin will be only visible to user via which NSX was registered with vCenter. If you are logged in to Web Client via any other user and you don’t see NSX plugin, then don’t freak out.
Login to Web Client via the service account added in previous step and click on network and Security plugin and select the NSX manager from list and go to Manage > Users tab and add the user/group to which NSX plugin should be visible.
Deploy NSX controllers
From vCenter home page click on Network and Security plugin and navigate to Instalaltion > Management tab and clcik on + button to add a new controller.
Supply a name for the controller and select the location where controller will be deployed. Supply a password of length 12 characters or more and select an IP pool from where this controller will gets its IP address.
If a pool don’t exists, then you have to create a pool first before you can associate the pool with this controller.
Wait for first controller node to deployed completely and status of node reading as connected.
As a best practice, I deployed 2 more controller nodes and waited till each controller had discovered its peers and all of them have status as conencted.
If anything is broken here or you see any error, then don’t proceed further until you fix the issues.
Host/Cluster prepration
Navigate to Host prepration and select the cluster where NSX VIB’s will be installed. Click on the gear icon as shown in screenshot and hit install.
NSX manager will start pushing VIB’s to all hosts that are part of this cluster. This may take some time as few host might go into MM and will be rebooted to complete the installation process.
In my case none of the host was rebooted as this is a brand new clean installation of Esxi hosts.
Once VIB’s are pushed to all host and installation completes, you will overall status of cluster/host as green.
VXLAN configuration
Next is to navigate to Logical Network prepration and click on Segment ID and define a range for the VXLAN.
Switch back to Host Prepration tab and you will see VXLAN status as Not Configured.
Clicking on that will popup new window to configure VXLAN networking.
Select the vDS from list and if using jumbo frame then set the correct MTU.
Select an IP pool (if there is no pool defined, then you have to create a new one here and then select that pool). Select appropriate VMKNic teaming policy. For lab purpose you can go with default.
It will take some time for VXLAN to be configured on each host.
Switch to Logical Network Prepration tab > VXLAN Transport tab to verify that each Esxi hosts were successfully configured with a vmk and address from the configured IP pool.
Configure Transport Zones
Navigate to Logical Network Preparation tab → Transport Zones. Click + to add a new Transport Zone and select the cluster with which this zone will be associated.
For replication mode you can leave the setting to default for lab setup.
And thats it for this post. We have completed the NSX configuration for now. We will dive into further configuration in next post of this series.
And that’s it for this post. I hope you find this post informational. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing. Be sociable 🙂