In last 2 posts of this series we understood what NSX is and how to install/configure NSX manager.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series, you can read them from below links:

1: Introduction to VMware NSX

2: Installing and Configuring NSX Manager

In this post we will be talking about NSX controllers. Before diving into lab, we will first discuss a little bit theory about NSX controllers and its importance.

NSX Controllers

NSX controllers are the control plane for NSX. They are deployed in a cluster arrangement, so as you deploy these, you can add more controllers for better performance and high availability so that if you loose one of em, you do not loose control functionality. These are important, if you loose enough of these, things stop working.

NSX controllers stores following tables:

1: MAC Table
2: ARP Table
3: VTEP Table

NSX controllers considerations:

1: Deployed in odd numbers

Controllers uses a cluster and uses a voting quorum.… Read the rest

In last post of this series we had a look into what NSX is and how it fits in a software defined datacenter. We also had a look on core NSX components and discussed in brief about them.

In this post we will be talking about basic installation and configuration options of NSX manager.

NSX manager provides a centralized management plane across your datacenter. It provides the management UI and API for NSX. NSX manager runs as a virtual appliance on an ESXi host and during installation it injects a plugin into the vSphere Web Client through which it can be managed.Each NSX Manager manages a single vCenter Server environment.

There are few prerequisites that must be met before proceeding with installation of NSX manager. These are as follows:

1: vSphere infrastructure should be ready. At least there should be 2 cluster.

2: NSX can be managed only via vSphere Web Client .… Read the rest

VMware NSX is the network virtualization and security platform that emerged from VMware after they acquired Nicira in 2012. This acquisition launched VMware into the software-defined networking (SDN)  and network functions virtualization (NFV) world.

VMware NSX® is a software networking and security virtualization platform that delivers the operational model of a virtual machine for the network. Virtual networks reproduce the Layer2 – Layer7 network model in software, allowing complex multi-tier network topologies to be created and provisioned programmatically in seconds, without the need for additional SoftLayer Private Networks. NSX also provides a new model for network security. Security profiles are distributed to and enforced by virtual ports and move with virtual machines.

With VMware NSX, virtualization now delivers for networking what it has already delivered for compute and storage. NSX can be configured through the vSphere Web Client, a command line interface (CLI), and REST API.

NSX includes a library of logical networking services – logical switches, logical routers, logical firewalls, logical load balancers, logical VPN, and distributed security.… Read the rest