nsx

There are a few NSX Communications network diagrams floating around, but none have really displayed the info in a way I found to be clear or complete enough. To that end, I have been working on a diagram that covers as much of the communications between NSX Components as I can. I’ve currently only covered single site NSX (not Cross vCenter) but I’ll publish an updated version soon including that.

vRealize Automation and NSX integration has introduced the ability to deploy multi-tiered applications with network services included. The current integration also enables a method to deploy micro-segmentation out of the box, based on dynamic Security Group membership and the Service Composer. This method does have some limitations, and can be inflexible for the on-going management of deployed applications. It requires in-depth knowledge and understanding of NSX and the Distributed Firewall, as well as access to the Networking and Security manager that is hosted by vCenter Server.

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.

Last Tuesday I had the privilege of presenting an introduction to the NSX APIs on vBrownBag EMEA - you can view the recording below or on vBrownBag’s youtube channel. During the presentation I showed a mind map of the API, which I’ve made available on GitHub in PDF format I’ve also published the Postman collection and environment I used during the demonstration, which covers some basic configuration and deploy tasks:

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.

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.

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.

Transforming Networking and Security for the Digital Era Wednesday morning I attended the Network and Security keynote which, if I’m honest, I found to be a bit boring. To be fair, it was probably aimed at business leaders and maybe not those that are technical. There were three customer stories, but I would have liked to have heard much more about the problems that NSX solved for them specifically, rather than being datacenter transformation/cloud journey stories that included NSX.

It will be no surprise, given my impending move to the VMware PSO NSX Practice, that this morning I’ve been focussing on NSX-T. The two sessions I attended were the Introduction to NSX-T Architecture and Integrating NSX-T with Kubernetes. In a weird twist of scheduling, the Kubernetes session was before the introduction session, but it worked out OK. I found the Kubernetes session really enjoyable and really felt like the speakers delivered a great overview of the integration and how they work together.

**a non-VMware employee! I am very much looking forward to meeting friends old and new during the week, so if you see me come say hi! Where can you find me? During the day I’m likely to be found in the bloggers area, or hanging around the vBrownbag stage, when I’m not in a session. Monday evening I’ll be leading a fearless team of hackers for the VMware {Code} Hackathon, hoping to create something cool!