NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster

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.

Physical, virtual and nested components of the NSX-T lab

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.

The NSX-T Transport Node network configuration

In this post I will walk through deploying the NSX Controllers and creating the NSX Controller Cluster.
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