In this post I will cover objective 2.3 of the VCAP-NV Deploy exam and will discuss about following topics:

• Deploy the appropriate NSX Edge (ESG/DLR) device according to a deployment plan
• Configure centralised and distributed routing
• Configure default gateway parameters
• Configure static routes
• Select and configure appropriate dynamic routing protocol according to a deployment plan:
  • OSPF
  • BGP
  • IS-IS
  Configure route redistribution to support a multi-protocol environment

  Lets begin by taking each objective one at a time .

  Deploy the appropriate NSX Edge (ESG/DLR) device according to a deployment plan

  Method of deploying the Edge Services Gateway (ESG) and Distributed Logical Router (DLR) is same. Infact both are NSX edges only, but difference lies in the functionality offered by ESG and DLR.

  DLR optimizes East-West traffic in datacenter i.e traffic between the VM’s whereas ESG optimizes North-South traffic i.e traffic going out of datacenter.  read more

What is Layer 2 (L2) Bridging?

A Layer 2 (L2) Bridge allows connectivity between a logical switch (VXLAN based) and a VLAN based portgroup on vDS that shares the same IP address space i.e VMs connected to VXLAN and distributed portgroup are on same subnet. 

A possible use cases for this scenario can be, an application server on a logical switch need to access a database server connected to the physical network or a customer wants to extend their application to the cloud but wants to keep certain components on-site and because its legacy application it cannot be re-IP’d or any other constraint. read more

This post covers Objective 2.1 of the VCIX-NV Deploy exam and we will learn about following topics in this post:

• Create/Delete Logical Switches
• Assign and configure IP addresses
• Connect a Logical Switch to an NSX Edge
• Deploy services on a Logical Switch
• Connect/Disconnect virtual machines to/from a Logical Switch
• Test Logical Switch connectivity

Before jumping into lab and performing the above tasks, lets understand about logical switches first.

What is a Logical Switch?

Functionality of a Logical switch is very similar to that of a physical switch i.e they allow isolation of applications and tenants for security purpose. A logical switch when deployed, creates a broadcast domain to allow isolation of the VM’s running in infrastructure. Logical switches uses VXLAN to provide separation of duties. read more

A transport zone is a user defined scope for VXLAN networking traffic. Transport zones defines which hosts/clusters will be able to participate in VXLAN based virtual networking. Transport zones acts as a container to host logical switches and Esxi host uses these logical switches to communicate among themselves or with the underlying physical infrastructure.

Transport zone is a boundary where Esxi hosts create tunnels among themselves for allowing VXLAN traffic to blow. A transport zone can be associated with one or more vSphere clusters and you can have more than one transport zone in your environment. read more

Today while cleaning up my lab, I came across situation where I needed to delete one of the deployed controllers. Although this task is fairly simple from vCenter UI, but recently I came across a situation (in VMware HOL) where I was unable to delete a controller via UI.

As an alternative, I came across set of API calls which did the job for me. In this post I will demonstrate how to use API calls to delete stuck/bad NSX controllers.

Step 1: Fetch controller details

Example: curl -sik -u “vcadmin@corp.local” -H ‘Content-Type: application/xml’ -X GET https://nsxmgr-01a.corp.local/api/2.0/vdn/controller | tidy -xml -indent -quiet read more