In an effort to continue to give you deeper visibility into your environment, vRNI has some great updates being released at VMworld. vRNI has always been a great end to end tool but now with assurance and verification giving you the ability to perform intent verification, with network wide visibility, and proactive operations based on … Read more
It is hard to believe that NSX-T is now three years old and what an incredible three years has it been. Being a former global enterprise architect for a couple companies that deployed NSX-T, I have had the privilege of watching this solution grow. Every year there feels like there is a new acquisition or … Read more
Back in the day security inside a datacenter was a lot simpler. You had workloads running onprem and inside the network they were “secure” and you put a firewall on the parameter to keep threats out. However, with applications living everywhere from traditional infrastructure, private clouds, hybrid clouds, public clouds, and on the edge it … Read more
I was fortunante enough to be selected by TechTarget for quotes on VMWare NSX-T 3.0 new features. It is truly a humbling honor to have been able to provide some details. Please find the link below. https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/252481484/NSX-T-30-enriches-VMwares-offering-for-hybrid-IT
Recently, VMware released NSX-T 2.5 with a lot of new features and improvements I know everyone is wanting. I know being one of those people I had to upgrade NSX-T from 2.4.0 in my production environment to 2.5. This is my walk through of upgrading from 2.4.0 to 2.5.0. I must admit the upgrade assistant … Read more
I know I am a terrible test taker. Point in fact, the only “exams” I recall being easy/best for me is when I would sit at a terminal and be given tasks to complete in a lab. Taking the educated guess that there are plenty of people like me in the world, I thought I … Read more
I just wanted to take a moment to write a quick article on some useful commands I use for troubleshooting NSX-T 2.4 By no means is this everything and I will update this article routinly. How to find VTEP (Tunnel End Points)From NSX Manager#get logical-switch vtep From ESXi Host to display TEP end point#esxcfg-vmnic -land#esxcli … Read more
As the journey continues we have now come to the portion where we setup the Edge. There are a couple different ways you can setup your edge, IE leverage Port Groups from a Distributed Switch or leverage NSX-T N-VDS switches. Do you deploy two Transport Zones or four? I have elected to deploy the edge … Read more
Part 4 of the journey takes us through deploying NSX-T on our ESXi Hosts. This will be a multi-step process and has some complexity but this piece can be a lot of fun. The work we do here will have a ripple effect as we move forward so it is important to know your use … Read more
At this point in my journey, we have our first NSX Manager deployed and verified. Along with the compute manager created. Next comes deploying the 2nd & 3rd Managers and form them into a cluster. Luckily, I like how NSX-T keeps getting easier so we’ll deploy this cluster from the UI instead of manually deploying an … Read more
As this journey continues the next step in deploying NSX-T 2.4 after deploying your first Manager is to add a new compute manager. This article will be a quick one because it is a quick and easy process. Woohoo! Other Articles in my serieshttps://digitalthoughtdisruption.com/2019/07/01/how-to-install-nsx-t-2-4-part-1-1st-nsx-manager/https://digitalthoughtdisruption.com/2019/07/03/how-to-install-nsx-t-2-4-part-2-deploy-compute-manger/https://digitalthoughtdisruption.com/2019/07/08/how-to-install-nsx-t-2-4-part-3-deploying-2nd-3rd-nsx-manager/https://digitalthoughtdisruption.com/2019/07/11/how-to-install-nsx-t-2-4-part-4-transport-zone-creation-uplink-profile-tep-ip-pool-configure-nsx-t-for-esxi/https://digitalthoughtdisruption.com/2019/07/15/how-to-install-nsx-t-2-4-part-5-the-war-that-was-setting-up-edge-vms-and-edge-cluster-on-n-vds/ Heads up:This is where having all the required ports open are … Read more
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
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
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
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
