NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster
Posts in this series
- NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying NSX Manager
- NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster
- NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: ESXi Host Preparation
- NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Adding a vCenter Compute Manager and Preparing Hosts
- NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Edge Installation
- NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Transport Zones and Transport Nodes
- NST-T 2.0 Lab Build: Logical Router Configuration
- NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Upgrading to NSX-T 2.1
Disclaimer! I am learning NSX-T, part of my learning is to deploy in my lab – if I contradict the official docs then go with the docs!
Lab Environment
This NSX-T lab environment is built as a nested lab on my physical hosts. There are four physical ESXi hosts, onto which I will deploy three ESXi VMs, a vCenter Server Appliance, NSX Manager, an NSX Controller cluster, and two NSX Edge Nodes.
Deployment Plan
I will follow the deployment plan from the NSX-T 2.0 documentation:
- Install NSX Manager.
- Install NSX Controllers.
- Join NSX Controllers with the management plane.
- Initialize the control cluster to create a master controller.
- Join NSX Controllers into a control cluster.
- Join hypervisor hosts with the management plane.
- Install NSX Edges.
- Join NSX Edges with the management plane.
- Create transport zones and transport nodes.
When this post series is complete, the network topology should be something like this, with two hostswitches configured. The ESXi Hosts will have a Tunnel Endpoint IP address, as will the Edge. The Edge will also have an interface configured for a VLAN uplink.
In this post I will walk through deploying the NSX Controllers and creating the NSX Controller Cluster.
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