Month: June 2018

Learning HCX-Part 4: HCX Site Pairing

Manish Jha

In this post we will be pairing the HCX-Enterprise appliance with the HCX-Cloud to start consuming HCX features.

If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Introduction to HCX

2: HCX Enterprise Deployment & Configuration

3: HCX Cloud Deployment & Configuration

Site pairing task is straight forward and it should compelte without any issue if all your configuration is correct. However In my lab I was getting an error “untrusted ssl connection” when trying to do site pairing.

If you are testing HCX in your lab environment, then for fixing this issue please read this article

 To pair HCX-Enterprise with HCX-Cloud, login to your on-premise vCenter Web Client and click on HCX plugin and go to Site Pairings tab.

sitep-1

Click on Register new connection.

sitep-2

Specify the public url of your HCX cloud appliance (we configured this while deploying the hcx cloud)

Specify the vCenter administrator user name.… Read More

HCX Site Pairing failed with error “Untrusted SSL Connection”

Manish Jha

In last post of HCX series, we deployed HCX Cloud appliance and performed basic configuration. The next step was to pair the HCX Enterprise appliance to the HCX Cloud so that we can start consuming HCX features. 

When I tried pairing the on-prem HCX to HCX Cloud, I was getting ssl connection error and site pairing task was failing.

site-pairing-error.png

I was pretty sure that this is happening because of untrusted ssl certs in my lab and I was thinking that may be I need to replace the self-signed certs with the CA signed certs. 

I quickly checked on this error with one of our staff engineer from hybridity team and he helped me with actual steps for fixing this issue. These are the high level steps you need to perform when you face this issue.

1: Generate Private and Public cert file on HCX Cloud appliance.

… Read More

Learning HCX-Part 3-HCX Cloud Deployment & Configuration

Manish Jha

In the last post of this series, we deployed the HCX Enterprise appliance on-premise and connected it to the vCenter server, NSX manager, and PSC. In this post, I will demonstrate the deployment of the HCX cloud appliance on the cloud side and walk through the basic configuration steps.

I don’t have a true cloud site, but I have 2 vCenter servers in 2 locations. Site A is where I deployed HCX Enterprise, and Site B is where I am deploying the HCX Cloud appliance. I am treating Site B as a cloud location for now.

HCX Cloud deployment is very similar to HCX Enterprise deployment and follows VMware’s standard OVF deployment procedure.

1: Once the appliance is deployed and powered on, login to the appliance by typing https://hcxcloud-fqdn:9443 and using admin as the username and password set during deployment.

2: If you have your license key handy, then activate the appliance, or you can do this later as well.… Read More

Learning HCX-Part 2-HCX Enterprise Deployment & Configuration

Manish Jha

In the first post of this series, we learned about the basics of HCX and discussed that HCX is available in 2 versions, i.e., HCX Enterprise (for On-Prem) and HCX Cloud (for cloud providers).

In this post, we will learn how to deploy the HCX Enterprise appliance on-premises and touch down on the basic configuration. 

The deployment of the HCX Enterprise appliance is very similar to the standard OVF deployment of any VMware product, and nothing fancy is there. The below slide shows the walk-through steps for deploying the appliance. 

Note: Make sure to deploy the appliance as “Thick provisioned, lazy zeroed.”

By default, the HCX ENT appliance is deployed with 12 GB of RAM, 4 vCPUs, and 60 GB of HDD.

Once the appliance boots up, login to the appliance by typing https://hcx-fqdn:9443 and using admin as the username and password set during deployment.

You need to have your HCX license key handy for activating the appliance.… Read More

Learning HCX-Part 1: Introduction to HCX

Manish Jha

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (previously known as HCX technologies) was announced by VMware last year during VMworld 2017 Europe, and it aimed at the following use cases:

  • Simplified Data Center Migration: Seamless migration of applications from on-premise to cloud. 
  • Infrastructure Hybridity: Hybrid Cloud Extension enables seamless cloud onboarding.
  • Disaster Recovery: In the event of a disaster, Hybrid Cloud Extension recovers the networking layer. Traffic routes are maintained as before the disaster, resulting in high-speed disaster recovery with low downtime.
  • Multi-Cloud Application Support: Hybrid Cloud Extension enables application components to exist in the multi-cloud world. 

So what exactly is the VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension?

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension is a SaaS offering that provides application mobility and infrastructure hybridity across different vSphere versions, both on-premises and in the cloud.

 

To learn more about HCX, please see the VMware HCX FAQ section.

VMware journey from HCM to HCX

Before the HCX solution, VMware offered a similar product named “Hybrid Cloud Manager (HCM)” to support their vCloud Air service.… Read More

My VCAP-NV (3V0-643) Exam Experience

Manish Jha

3 weeks back I attempted my VCAP-NV  (3V0-643) exam and passed with 408 marks. This was my second attempt, in my first attempt I failed with 282 marks as I left too many routing questions as I was not very much comfortable with them.

I interacts with NSX everyday as its core of our Networking in production and my job is to troubleshoot everyday network issues and this helped me a lot during my preparation. 

VCAP6-NV exam have 23 questions and you have total of 3.5 hours to finish the exam. But believe me 3.5 hours are not enough as there are few questions which are very lengthy and you may have to read those questions 2-3 times to make sure you have understood the requirements completely.

Thumb rule for passing this exam is to stick with the exam blueprint and practice each and every topic mentioned in blueprint. The exam is designed in such a way that it covers 90% topics of the blueprint.… Read More

VCAP6-NV Deploy (3V0-643) Study Guide

Manish Jha

Section 1 – Prepare VMware NSX Infrastructure

Objective 1.1 – Deploy VMware NSX Infrastructure components

Objective 1.2 – Prepare Host Clusters for Network Virtualization

Objective 1.3 – Configure and Manage Transport Zones

Section 2 – Create and Manage VMware NSX Virtual Networks

Objective 2.1 – Create and Manage Logical Switches

Objective 2.2 – Configure and Manage Layer 2 Bridging

Objective 2.3 – Configure and Manage Routing

Section 3 – Deploy and Manage VMware NSX Network Services

Objective 3.1 – Configure and Manage Logical Load Balancing

Objective 3.2 – Configure and Manage Logical Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

Objective 3.3 – Configure and Manage Additional VMware NSX Edge Services

Section 4 – Secure a vSphere Data Center with VMware NSX

Objective 4.1 – Configure and Manage Logical Firewall Services

Objective 4.2 – Configure and Manage Service Composer

Section 5 – Perform Operational Management of a VMware NSX Implementation

Objective 5.1 – Backup and Restore Network Configurations

Objective 5.2 – Monitor a VMware NSX Implementation

Objective 5.3 – Configure and Manage Role Based Access Control

Section 6 – Configure Cross vCenter Networking and Security

Objective 6.1 – Configure Cross vCenter VMware NSX infrastructure components

Objective 6.2 – Configure and Manage Universal Logical Network Objects

Objective 6.3 – Configure and Manage Universal Logical Security Objects

Section 7 – Perform Advanced VMware NSX Troubleshooting

Objective 7.1 – Troubleshoot Common VMware NSX Installation/Configuration Issues

Objective 7.2 – Troubleshoot VMware NSX Connectivity Issues

Objective 7.3 – Troubleshoot VMware NSX Edge Services Issues

Section 8 – Utilize API Commands to Manage a VMware NSX Deployment

Objective 8.1 – Administer and Execute calls using the VMware NSX vSphere API

Tools

NSX Installation Guide

NSX Administration Guide

VMware NSX Brownfield Deployment Guide

VMware NSX Network Virtualization Design Guide

NSX Command Line Interface Reference Guide

NSX Troubleshooting Guide

NSX 6.2 API Guide

 

… Read More

Objective 1.2 – Prepare Host Clusters for Network Virtualization

Manish Jha

Prepare vSphere Distributed Switching for NSX

NSX works only with distributed switch and not with standard switches. Before you deploy NSX and start configuring stuffs, you have to make sure that you have fully configured the VDS and have migrated portgroups/uplinks etc from VSS to VDS.

One of the most important requirement for NSX is to set the minimum MTU at VDS to 1600 bytes. So before you start adding hosts to VDS, make sure that appropriate MTU is already configured on VDS.

The requirement for 1600 bytes is due to the original Ethernet frame being wrapped (encapsulated) with additional headers for VXLAN, UDP and IP; thus increasing its size, and is now called a VXLAN Encapsulated Frame.

To verify/configure MTU on vDS, select the vDS from list and navigate to Manage > Settings > Properties tab and hit edit button.

vds-mtu.PNG

Under ‘Advanced’ tab, change the MTU to 1600 and hit OK.… Read More

Objective 1.1- Deploy VMware NSX Infrastructure Components

Manish Jha

Deploy the NSX Manager Virtual Appliance

Deploying NSX Manager is a straight forward task like deploying any other appliance from ova file. I have already covered the steps of deployment in one of my old post so I am not repeating the steps of deployment again.

Integrate the NSX Manager with vCenter Server

Once NSX Manager is deployed, next task is to integrate it with vCenter server. To do so, login to NSX Manager UI (https://NSX-FQDN) and from home page click on Manage vCenter Registration. 

Under ‘NSX Management Service’, click on edit button for vCenter Server.

vc-nsx-0

Specify vCenter Server IP/FQDN and credentials via which NSX will communicate with vCenter server. User account used can be vCenter server local administrator or a service account.

vc-nsx-1

Important: If you are using a service account for NSX registration with vCenter, make sure that account is added to Administrators group in vCenter in advance before doing the registration.… Read More

Getting Started With NSX REST API

Manish Jha

What is REST API?

if you are new to Rest API and wondering what exactly it is and what do we do using API, then I would recommend reading this article first before moving down further in this post. Also I found this article very useful to understand how Rest API works.

Before starting the topics of objective 8.1, I want to pen down few facts about Rest API.

  • The NSX Manager accepts API requests on TCP port 443 over HTTP application protocol.
  • You need a rest client to execute Rest API calls. There are plenty of clients available such as Postman and CURL (linux based). You can also integrate the Rest client in your browser. For mozilla firefox you can add this extension and for chrome you can add this
  • Rest API’s are usually used when you can’t do something from GUI (because there is no option available) or when you want to automate stuffs using scripting or some other tools.
… Read More