Paul Bryant I wanted to kick off a new NSX-T 2.4 series. I have posted a lot of administrative articles and now I figured I’d start a series of how to actually install NSX-T. In 2.4 VMware combined both the NSX Manager & NSX Controller into a single appliance, which has made deployment a lot easier. Since … Read more
Last week I was on a reference call in regards to VxRail. I was asked many questions but one surprising question was, “How difficult is it to add storage?” I thought I would write a quick article to show just how it is done.In a regular vSAN cluster you would need to add the drives, … Read more
In the last couple of weeks I have had to perform a few VxRail upgrades to particular code levels. As many of you know this requires downloading the particular code bundle IE 4.5.229 and performing a local upgrade. However, on two separate clusters in two separate datacenters I noticed that the bundle upload was taking … Read more
I know with NSX-T there are plenty of terminology tossed around. Here is another one for you in the tunnel endpoint (TEP) 🙂You may ask, “What is a TEP and why should I care?” Short and simple answer is a TEP enables ESXi hosts to participate in an NSX-T overlay network. Why should I care? … Read more
A single logical switch is mapped to a unique Geneve segment that is distributed across the ESXi hosts in a transport zone. The logical switch supports line-rate switching in the ESXi host without the constraints of VLAN sprawl or spanning tree issues. A segment is a representation of layer-2 connectivity across transport nodes (ESXi Hosts), … Read more
A Tier-1 Gateway can span multiple ESXi and KVM hosts. A Distributed Router can provide local routing between different segments on a host. A DR also provides distributed east-west routing functionality across hosts. Things to know about a T1: T1 uplinks to a T0 router T1 has down links to segments Owned and config by … Read more
When it comes to a multi-tier router architecture you will be connecting Tier-1 router(s) to an existing Tier-0 router. East-West routing is performed by the DR (distributed Router) in the Tier-1 router. The Tier-0 provides services and external connectivity. Some things to be aware of: When the service and distributed routers are created, they are … Read more
Every so often I will get the question, “I need to log into the iDRAC on Host X, do you have it’s IP.” I thought I would put together this quick article with the command to provide this information. StepsIssue the following command from the ESXi host you are attempting to gather the iDRAC IP … Read more
One of the things I like about NSX-T is the ability to deploy Tier-1 and Tier-0 routers. The T0 is the gateway that bridges the virtual world to the physical world. Below you will find a screenshot of the logical architecture followed by a step by step process to deploy a T0 router in your … Read more
From time to time you may encounter an error where your VxRail node goes into a device missing state in VxRail manager but is operating normally in vCenter. The main culprit behind this is typically the PTAgent. The PTAgent exists to poll hardware information on a node every few minutes using ipmi. Assuming there isn’t … Read more
There may be instances where you Need to factory reset a VxRail node. IE you are creating a new cluster, a fresh install is failing, or because you feel like it 🙂 Here is an easy step by step guide on how to RASR reset a VxRail host.*Please remember you are going to be taking … Read more
There are instances where you may need to remove a node from your VxRail cluster. One instance may be moving the host from one cluster to another (ensure host is at same code level as the new cluster). Another instance you may be you are wanting to shrink a large cluster into two smaller manageable … Read more
As I continue my blogging series on deploying NSX-T 2.4 in your environment, my next topic will be Domains. This will be a quick blog as there is not a lot about setting up Domains. Domains will pop up a lot when configuring NSX-T. They are great for logically grouping a collection of workloads and … Read more
Many asked so here it is. A how to guide on leveraging Tags and Security Groups to apply Firewall Policies/Rules to groups of VMs. My main goal for this article is to simplify a complicated 2.4 Admin Guide, which does not spell out how to do this in step by step options. The Admin Guide … Read more
There may be instances when you want to leverage NSX-T for NAT services and not an external NAT services. Thanks to the simplified management of NSX-T deploying these services is easy. Terms:Source NAT (SNAT): translates a source IP address of outbound packets so that packets appears as originating from a different network Destination NAT (DNAT): … Read more
Lately, I have had people messaging asking to help them troubleshoot their environment. Everything from random performance impacts to my SQL DBA says I have a disk IO issue. I thought I would take the time to post a few helpful ruby shell commands I use to help me keep an eye on my own … Read more
Over the past couple years I hear the term Micro-Segmentation over and over and over and over again as the benefit of NSX & software defined networking. I thought I would take a moment to write about four benefits of NSX-T I’m witnessing in my environments that bring value add on top of Micro-Segmentation. 1. … Read more
I wanted to take a moment and provide a link to the new feature release of NSX-T 2.4. This has been a major release with a re-architecture of the NSX-T components. Some feature highlightsCombining the NSX Manager and Controller nodes into a single applianceInfrastructure as CodeExpanding Security FeaturesHigher Levels of Scale, Resiliency, Performance https://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2019/02/introducing-nsx-t-2-4-a-landmark-release-in-the-history-of-nsx.html/
Whether deploying a new VxRail or deploying a new cluster you will still need a way for the virtual machines to communicate. With VxRail manager it will create a virtual distributed switch (vDS) as part of the initial deployment leveraging the first four onboard ports. However, if you are leveraging an additional daughter card for … Read more
VMware has just released a new document to perform a migration from NSX-V to NSX-T leveraging the NSX-T Datacenter Migration Coordinator. Click to access nsxt_24_migrate.pdf Happy reading.
