Limitless Networking

VMware NSX 101 – Components

Today I want to explain the basic components and the set-up of VMware NSX. In this case I’m referring to NSX for vSphere or NSX-V for short. I want to explain what components are involved, how you set them up for an initial deployment and what the requirements are.

Versioning

At time of this writing the latest release is NSX 6.1.4. This version added support for vSphere 6, although you cannot use any vSphere 6 feature in this release, there is support for the platform itself only.

vSphere

The first step is of course deploy your ESXi vSphere cluster with ESXi 5.5 or 6.0 with vCenter 5.5 or 6.0. I recommend using the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) instead of the Windows version. You will also need a Windows VM where the vSphere Update Manager is installed, this is not available as virtual appliance, only as Windows application. I also highly recommend installing an Active Directory server to manage all of your passwords. You will be installing a large amount of machines with all different usernames and possibly passwords. I recommend picking a very long and difficult one, as all VMware appliances seem to require a different password complexity.

 

After deploying the initial cluster it’s also essential to deploy a Distributed vSwitch across the nodes where you will be deploying virtual networks. For this feature you will need the Enterprise license (or the trial will suffice) when running ESXi 5.5 Update 3 and NSX (before that Enterprise Plus was required).

NSX Manager

The only component you download is the NSX Manager. This OVA file contains everything you will need for deploying NSX. After deploying the OVA through vCenter you are able to log-in to the Web GUI of the NSX Manager. The only setting available is connecting to the vSphere Single Sign-On server and to vCenter. When deploying all components make sure you set NTP servers for everything in the lab. There are many integrations and they all rely on authentication that also takes time into consideration.

 

After connecting the NSX Manager you will no longer need it that GUI. Within the vSphere Web Client a “Networking & Security” tab is now available.

NSX Controller

The next step is to deploy at least 3 NSX Controllers in the cluster. This is automatically done by the Manager after filling in required information. You need 3 for redundancy as the cluster will select a master controller, which is done by using a majority number (quorum). With only 2 nodes, there is no majority and therefore at least 3 are required for redundancy (think of RAID with Parity disks). The controller is the critical piece of the software. Here all ARP requests are handled and all information is shared with the ESXi hosts. The Controller will also take care of multicast replication when the unicast mode is chosen for transport.

Prepare hosts

The following step is to install 3 kernel modules in all hosts. This is done using the VMware Update Manager (the Windows application) and just a single click in the GUI. It will install the NSX module to communicate with the controllers, the Distributed Logical Router (DLR) and the Distributed Firewall. No configuration is necessary as all changes are pushed by the controllers.

NSX Edge

To get traffic to and from the virtual environment you will require an NSX Edge today, as soon as OVSDB is available this could be your MX router as well! The NSX Edge has 2 forms, the first is the Distributed Logical Router that offers basic routing, bridging and firewall features. The second version is a VM that traffic is hair pinned through, like a software router. The second version also offers VPN and Load Balancing features.

Pools

To support the VXLAN transport, the hosts need to get an IP address to use as source address. This can be assigned using DHCP or an IP Pool, more on this in a next blog! Next a Segment ID pool needs to be created to allocate VNI’s for the virtual networks (called logical switches). Today it’s not supported to have more than 4000 segments on NSX, which combines the regular port groups and NSX port groups on the distributed vSwitch.

Transport Zone

The final step is to create a transport zone. This defines a “data center” or a “site” where NSX runs. This limits the broadcast domain. Per transport zone you are able to select wether the NSX Controller should handle multicast replication (Unicast mode) or that the network should handle this (Multicast or Hybrid mode). The recommended choice is Unicast mode so you won’t require multicast routing protocols or IGMP from the network. VMware eliminates the need for smart network hardware even further with this, but the solutions runs best with optimized hardware of course running as IP CLOS Fabric offering “Layer 2 as a service” using network virtualization.

Logical Switches

Now the deployment is ready to have the first VXLAN segments created, which are called Logical Switches. These networks are created as distributed port groups, so you can use the standard tools to connect VM’s to these virtual networks and suddenly you are using VXLAN transport!

 

I hope this article gave you some insight in how NSX is configured and what components it consists of.

 

Happy Labbing!

 

Rick Mur

5 Comments

  1. Abdessamad

    Hi Rick,

    Thanks for the great write up,

    Wanted to know if vmware is offering any free or trial version of NSX ? looks u must be a partner or customer to get one.. ?!

    • rickmur

      NSX is currently only offered to partners and vExperts or you have to buy it 🙂

  2. Andre

    > For this feature you will need the Enterprise Plus license

    This is not entirely true anymore: With vSphere 5.5 U3 and vSphere 6 you only require the Enterprise license – the NSX license will activate the VDS feature in vSphere.

    • rickmur

      Thanks! I didn’t know that. I’ll update the post.

  3. Imran

    Great work rick

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