Welcome to the final and Part 4 of the blog series on NSX Application Platform where we demonstrate NAPP Scale-Out. NAPP scale-out is supported only on Advanced form factor (which we performed in the previous article) and also requires the TKC / Kubernetes cluster to be scaled out with the appropriate number of worker nodes. If you were not following along, please check out the previous parts of the series below: NSX 4.1 Application Platform (NAPP) – Part 1 Environment Setup NSX 4.1 Application Platform (NAPP) – Part 2 Deployment NSX 4.1 Application Platform (NAPP) – Part 3&nbs ..read more

Welcome to Part 3 of the blog series on NSX Application Platform. In the previous article we deployed NSX Application platform in standard form factor which supports the below NSX features: NSX Metrics NSX Malware Prevention NSX Network Detection and Response In this part, we will upgrade the form factor to “Advanced” in order to support NSX Intelligence and NAPP scale-out. Note that NAPP form factor upgrade requires the Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster to be sized / scaled up appropriately to support the new NAPP form factor. We can only upgrade from a standard to advanced form factor. If we deplo ..read more

NSX Application Platform (NAPP) was first introduced in NSX-T 3.2 which is a containerized platform to host the below NSX features: NSX Intelligence NSX Malware Prevention NSX Network Detection and Response (NDR) NSX Metrics To enable NSX Application Platform (NAPP), we require a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster or any CNCF conformant upstream Kubernetes cluster with the required form factor to host the platform. By moving to NAPP, we achieve better scalability of these features as the platform can be scaled out as and when needed compared to the traditional ova based appliance model. In Part 1 of ..read more

I had the privilege to present a topic at the prestigious event – VMware Explore India 2023 with my colleague and friend Vinay Agarwal (@vmvtips) held at Jio World Center, Mumbai. This was a breakout session and our topic was “Achieve Security and Availability in Containers with Antrea, AKO, AMKO & NSX” (CSCA1104-26IN) held on April 11,2023 at the Jasmine 2 Hall. Our session was on Track 3 and we were excited to see a new delivery experience. All the breakout sessions were delivered sound-free over headphones. Presenters and attendees wear headphones and use track selector remote to conne ..read more

Until NSX-T 3.2.2, a compute manager (vCenter) can be managed by only a single instance of NSX-T (or NSX) manager. This means that all clusters in the compute manager will be prepared by the same NSX instance and if data plane isolation is required between clusters, it is achieved using separate NSX transport zones and edge clusters. However, there are some scenarios where customers have multiple environments like Prod / non-Prod etc. mapped to different vSphere clusters in the same vCenter server and require different NSX manager instances to manage these compute clusters. For example, a Pro ..read more

Transport node profiles (TNPs) are a way to consistently apply NSX configuration to vSphere compute clusters. TNPs define the transport zones (overlay and/or VLAN), VDS configuration, uplink profile, TEP IP assignment (DHCP or IP pools) and teaming policy uplink mapping to VDS uplinks. TNPs are applied at the vSphere cluster level and as such, they can’t be used to prepare standalone hosts or edge nodes. A TNP can have only one uplink profile. An uplink profile defines a single TEP VLAN. As such, a TNP can be used to prepare clusters for NSX if the hosts have L2 adjacency for the TEP VLAN. Th ..read more

Welcome to the final and Part 4 of the blog series on Stateful Active-Active gateways in NSX 4.0.1. In the previous parts we discussed about stateful active-active single tier & two-tier routing, new terminologies like edge sub-clusters, interface groups, shadow interfaces, peer-shadow interfaces, traffic punting and packet walks with different supported topologies. If you missed these parts, please check them out below: Part 1: https://vxplanet.com/2023/01/24/nsx-4-0-1-stateful-active-active-gateway-part-1-single-tier-routing/ Part 2 : https://vxplanet.com/2023/01/30/nsx-4-0-1-stateful-a ..read more

Welcome to the final and Part 4 of the blog series on Stateful Active-Active gateways in NSX 4.0.1. In the previous parts we discussed about stateful active-active single tier & two-tier routing, new terminologies like edge sub-clusters, interface groups, shadow interfaces, peer-shadow interfaces, traffic punting and packet walks with different supported topologies. If you missed these parts, please check them out below: Part 1: https://vxplanet.com/2023/01/24/nsx-4-0-1-stateful-active-active-gateway-part-1-single-tier-routing/ Part 2 : https://vxplanet.com/2023/01/30/nsx-4-0-1-stateful-a ..read more

Welcome back!!! We are at Part 3 of the blog series on NSX 4.0.1 Stateful Active-Active Gateways. In Part 1, we dealt with a single tier routing scenario with workload segments attached directly to a stateful A/A T0 gateway. In Part 2, we extended the topology to two tier, where the workload segments are attached to a stateful A/A T1 gateway up streamed to a stateful A/A T0 gateway. If you missed the previous articles, please read them below: Part 1 : https://vxplanet.com/2023/01/24/nsx-4-0-1-stateful-active-active-gateway-part-1-single-tier-routing/ Part 2: https://vxplanet.com/2023/01/30/ns ..read more

Welcome back!!! We are at Part 2 of the blog series on NSX Stateful Active-Active Gateways. In Part 1, we dealt with a single tier routing scenario where we had the logical segments attached to stateful A/A T0 Gateway and discussed about Edge sub-clusters, Interface groups, shadow and peer-shadow interfaces, traffic punting, edge node selection for traffic etc. In case you missed it, please read it below: NSX 4.0.1 Stateful Active-Active Gateway – Part 1 – Single Tier Routing In this article we will extend the topology to stateful A/A two tier by attaching Active-Active stateful Tier 1 ..read more