NSX Installation

IT organizations have gained significant benefits as a direct result of server virtualization. Server consolidation reduced physical complexity, increased operational efficiency and the ability to dynamically re-purpose underlying resources to quickly and optimally meet the needs of increasingly dynamic business applications.
VMware’s Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) architecture is now extending virtualization technologies across the entire physical data center infrastructure. VMware NSX, the network virtualization platform, is a key product in the SDDC architecture. With NSX, virtualization delivers for networking what it has already delivered for compute and storage. In much the same way that server virtualization programmatically creates, snapshots, deletes and restores software-based virtual machines (VMs), NSX network virtualization programmatically creates, snapshots, deletes, and restores software-based virtual networks. The result is a completely transformative approach to networking that not only enables data center managers to achieve orders of magnitude better agility and economics, but also allows for a vastly simplified operational model for the underlying physical network. With the ability to be deployed on any IP network, including both existing traditional networking models and next-generation fabric architectures from any vendor, NSX is a completely non-disruptive solution. In fact, with NSX, the physical network infrastructure you already have is all you need to deploy a software-defined data center.

With server virtualization, a software abstraction layer (server hypervisor) reproduces the familiar attributes of an x86 physical server (for example, CPU, RAM, Disk, NIC) in software, allowing them to be pro-grammatically assembled in any
arbitrary combination to produce a unique VM in a matter of seconds.
With network virtualization, the functional equivalent of a network hypervisor reproduces the complete set of Layer 2 through Layer 7 networking services (for example, switching, routing, access control, firewalling,
QoS, and load balancing) in software As a result, these services can be programmatically assembled in any arbitrary combination, to produce unique, isolated virtual networks in a matter of seconds.

NSX installation involves the deployment of several virtual appliances.
1- Deploy NSX Manager
Deploying an NSX Manager OVF/OVA template; and ensuring that the NSX Manager and the ESX hosts management interfaces can communicate

2- Register with vCenter
from the NSX management console register the vCenter, link the NSX Manager and a vCenter with each other.

3- Deploy NSX Controllers
NSX controllers are deployed on ESX hosts and run as virtual appliances

4- Prepare Hosts
prepare the ESX hosts for NSX by installing several VIBs on the hosts. These VIBs enable the Layer 2 VXLAN functionality, distributed routing, and distributed firewall.

5- Configure logical networking, deploy and configure NSX Edge Gateway(s) and configure network services

After configuring VXLANs, specifying virtual network interface (VNI) ranges, and creating transport zones, you can build out your NSX overlay topology.

Deploy NSX Manager

To Deploying an NSX Manager, click “Files” Tab then “Deploy OVF template”

Then specify a name and location for the deployed template

Select the Disk format in which you want to store the virtual disk.
in production environment, VMware recommend the Thick Provision
I will chose the thin Provision in my lab environment

Enter
Type CLI admin and Privilege Mode password
Hostname and IP (IPv4/IPv6) Address
DNS Server Address and NTP Server

 

review your options and then click “Finish ” to start the deployment

wait until the Deployment complete

Then from the management console you can see “NSX Manager” virtual machine

after Deployment complete successfully, start the virtual machine

After the NSX management service started. You can use a Web browser to open the
NSX Manager appliance GUI at https://<nsx-manager-ip&gt;.

Home and summary pages should be similar to fig below

 

Register vCenter Server with NSX Manager

The next step is to register vCenter server with NSX Manager; that will enables NSX Management service to display in the infrastructure inventory,
Note: Only one NSX Manager can be registered with a vCenter.

Navigate to the NSX Manager appliance GUI, and log in as admin
Under Appliance Management, click Manage vCenter Registration.

click Edit on the “vCenter server ” section; then enter vCenter Server information

verify the process completed successfully

Login to the vSphere Web Client and make sure that the Networking & Security icon appears on the Home
tab.

(optional) configuring Syslog server in production environment is always

Deploy NSX Controller

NSX Controller provides control plane functions for NSX logical switching and routing functions. It serves as the central control point for all logical switches and maintains information about all hosts, logical switches (VXLANs), and distributed logical routers.

recommended to deploy 3 NSX Controller for each host cluster for redundancy
it must be odd number 1,3 or 5,  1 no redundancy , 5 is over kill

Login to the vSphere Web Client and click the “Networking & Security” icon on the Home tab.
Click “installation” –> Management ; then click “+” on NSX Controller nodes section

on the “Add Controller” windows Enter your system information and click OK to continue.

deploying the controller may take some time, wait until the node status change to “connected”

 

Exclude Virtual Machines from Firewall Protection

In a production you may need to exclude a virtual machines from NSX distributed firewall protection.
By default NSX Manager, NSX Controllers, and NSX Edge virtual machines are excluded from NSX protection.

Login to the vSphere Web Client and click the “Networking & Security” icon on the Home tab.
Click “NSX Managers”

Select the “NSX Managers” that you want to manage; then click the Manage tab and then click the “Exclusion List” tab.

then from the “virtual machine selector ” windows select the virtual machines that you want to exclude