Objective 5.1 – Create and administer Logical Switches

Principles

  • Given a scenario, demonstrate the proper way to add/remove a Logical Switch
  • Determine use case for and contrast the three Control Plane Modes
    • Multi-cast
    • Hybrid
    • Unicast
  • Determine use case for connecting a Logical Switch to an NSX Edge gateway
  • Deploy services to a Logical Switch
  • Demonstrate multiple ways of adding or removing virtual machines from a Logical Switch
  • Test Logical Switch connectivity

References

  1. NSX Administration Guide

http://pubs.vmware.com/NSX-62/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/nsx_62_admin.pdf

  1. NSX Installation Guide

https://pubs.vmware.com/NSX-62/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/nsx_62_install.pdf

Given a scenario, demonstrate the proper way to add/remove a Logical Switch

Pre-requisites

  1. User has Enterprise Administrator privileges in vCenter
  2. VXLAN UDP port is open on firewalls
  3. Transport network MTU >= 1600 bytes
  4. Controller Port 1234 is open on firewall
  5. At least 1 vDS is configured and all compute and edge clusters are attached to it
  6. NSX Manager and Controller deployed
  7. Host Preparation is complete alongside Transport Zones and Segment ID Pool
  8. In addition, for Universal Logical Switches:
    • Primary NSX Manager assigned
    • Universal Segment ID Pool configured
    • Universal Transport Zone configured

Procedure

  1. In a cross-vCenter environment, select the Primary NSX Manager first
  2. Go to Network and Security -> Logical Switches and click “Add”
  3. Select the appropriate Transport Zone
  4. Enable IP Discovery [Optional – default on]
    1. Suppresses ARP between workloads on the same segment
  5. Enable MAC Learning [Optional – default off]
    1. Used where VMs have multiple MAC Addresses or are using trunking vNICs
    2. Enabling MAC Learning builds a VLAN:MAC pair learning table per vNIC and stored as part of the dvfilter data
    3. The dvfilter data is restored at the new location and a reverse ARP is issued for all entries in the table

Determine use case for and contrast the three Control Plane Modes

  • Multicast
    • Relies on Multicast being configured on the underlying network
    • Frames are flooded within the L2 domain using the Multicast address for that VXLAN to get MAC addresses
  • Unicast
    • Relies the NSX Controller to find MAC addresses
  • Hybrid
    • Offloads local replication to the physical network
    • Requires IGMP snooping on the first hop switch and access to an IGMP Querier on the VTEP network
    • The first hop with handles replication for VTEP BUM traffic

Determine use case for connecting a Logical Switch to an NSX Edge gateway

  • Used to provide connectivity between L2 Segments
  • Connected to a DLR for E-W Routing
  • Connected to an ESG for N-S Routing

Deploy services to a Logical Switch

  • 3rd Party Services must be deployed before connecting Switch
  • Select the “Add Service Profile” icon to associate a service with a Logical Switch

Demonstrate multiple ways of adding or removing virtual machines from a Logical Switch

  1. Select Logical Switch and click the “Add Virtual Machine” icon
    1. Select VMs
    2. Select VM NICs
  2. Edit VM Properties and selected the desire Logical Switch by directly associating it with the relevant NSX Port Group

Test Logical Switch connectivity

  • Select Logical Switch and double-click
  • Select “Monitor” Tab followed by the “Hosts” Tab
  • Select Source and Destination Hosts
  • Set minimum packet size >= 1600
  • Click “start test” to check connectivity