In last post of this series, we learnt about uplink profiles and some design considerations about how to configure them. In this post we will learn about Transport Zones and Transport Node Profiles and I walk through steps of configuring the same.

If you have landed directly on this post by mistake, I would recommend reading previous articles from this blog series:

1: NSX-T Management & Control Plane Setup

2: Uplink Profiles in NSX-T

Let’s get started.

What is Transport Zone?

A transport zone is a logical container which controls which Hosts/VM’s can participate in a particular network by limiting what logical switches that a host can see. 

Segments aka logical switches when created, are attached to a transport zone. One logical switch can only be attached to one transport zone. So the host/cluster which is part of X transport zone where Y logical segment is attached, will be able to see those segments. A transport zone can span multiple host clusters. 

The span of a segment (logical switch) is limited to a transport zone, so virtual machines in different transport zones cannot be on the same Layer 2 network.

Types of Transport Zones

in NSX-T, there are two different types of Transport zones, Overlay and VLAN:

Overlay Transport Zones

• Both ESXi/KVM hosts and Edge nodes are part of overlay transport zone. 
• When hosts/edges are added to an overlay transport zone, a N-VDS is installed on both of them.
• Carries Geneve traffic between transport nodes over TEP’s.

VLAN Transport Zones

• Again both Host and Edge can be part of this transport zone and this type of transport zone supports VLAN backed segments. VLAN backed uplinks for edge nodes are created in VLAN TZ.
• A N-VDS will be installed on the Edge nodes when it is added to the VLAN transport zone

Below diagram is a sample representation of how network topology looks like when Hosts/Edges are added to transport zone and NVDS is created.

Transport Node Profile

Transport nodes are hypervisor hosts such as ESXi & KVM hosts and NSX Edges that will participate in an NSX-T overlay.

A transport node profile defines how NSX-T Data Center is installed and configured on the hosts in a particular cluster the profile is attached to.

A Transport node profiles define transport zones, member hosts, N-VDS switch configuration including uplink profile, IP assignment, mapping of physical NICs to uplink interfaces etc.

Note: Transport node profiles are only applicable to hosts. It cannot be applied to NSX Edge transport nodes.

Prerequisites

Before creating TN profiles, make sure following items are already configured:

• Verify that a compute manager is configured.
• Verify that the hosts are part of a vCenter Server cluster.
• Verify that a transport zone is configured.
• Verify that an IP pool is configured, or DHCP must be available in the network deployment.

Ok enough of theory. Let’s dive into lab and see things in action.

Create Transport Zone

To create Transport Zone, login to NSX-T Manager and navigate to System > Fabric > Transport Zones and click on Add button.

We will be creating 3 transport zones here. One overlay and 2 VLAN backed. 

Provide a name for the TZ and select traffic type for the TZ. Also provide a name for the NVDS.

 

Creating Transport Node Profiles

TN profiles are created under System > Profiles > Transport Node Profiles

• Provide a name for the profile.
• Select type of node switch.

Note: In my implementation I am using converged vds (CVDS) and not NVDS, so I have selected VDS as type.

• Leave the mode selected as standard.
• For CVDS, we have to select an existing VDS that exists in vCenter.
• Since TN profile only applies to hosts, we have to add both overlay and VLAN TZ, which we created earlier for hosts.
• Select appropriate uplink profile.

For TEP IP assignment, you can either leverage DHCP or IP Pool. I am using DHCP in my environment to assign IP’s to host TEP. 

Under teaming policy, we map the uplinks (created in uplink profile) to match with physical NIC’s of the ESXi host. 

And that’s it for this post. 

In next post of this series, we will learn about configuring ESXi Transport Nodes to form data plane.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing 🙂