VMware #NSX 6.3 Controller – Failure / Data loss behaviour

It’s been a month since NSX 6.3 has been released. It just came to my attention that an unknown behaviour of the NSX-Controller has been changed with that release.

We have 3 NSX-Controller while 2 of them should at least be available to remain complete functional. As we all hopefully now the NSX-Controller manages tables (VTEP, MAC, ARP) for Layer-2 VXLAN Operations (if we have selected hybrid or unicast as a replication mode).

NSX-Controller Failure

The following tables tries to explain the impact of controller failures in case we are in Unicast or Hybrid-Mode in case of Layer-2 switching functionality:

NSX Controller Available Cluster-Status NSX-Controller Operations Mode Impact
3 healthy read/write No Impact
2 degraded read/write No Impact
1 degraded read only New VMs or vMotioned VMs will have networking issues
0 headless(-chicken) New VMs or vMotioned VMs will have networking issues

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Let’s discover #vROPS Management Pack for #NSX

The more I work with #vROPS (vRealize Operations Manager) the more I love it (I know that it has a little bit of a learning curve).

The more I work with #NSX the more I love it (hell-yeah… the learning curve might be even bigger).

In both cases I did a lot of training and consulting work during 2016 and it is about time to bring those two solutions together and maximize our benefits. If you have licenced NSX and vRealize Operations Manager in the advanced edition you can make use of the SDDC Management pack, which includes the management pack for NSX 3.0.

In the following I want to give you a quick rush over the installation and features of the mentioned management pack.

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NSX and nested ESXi environments: caveats and layer-2 troubleshooting

After having NSX running in a nested environment, I started last week to integrate / built a NSX environment between my physical and nested ESXi hosts. To be honest, achieving this was more complicated than I have expected. Anyway it was a good trip to improve my NSX troubleshooting skills and maybe the key-findings can help one or another to avoid the problems I had.

From a logical-level my goal was pretty straight forward. I have 3 physical (vSAN) ESXi hosts running n-nested ESXi hosts. All of them are managed from a single vCenter and should be part of a single transport zones where n-VXLANs (unfassbar viele) will be deployed.

Logical_design

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Why learn VMware #NSX

This is the ‘real’ first post in my why learn section here on vLenzker. If you are looking for sources how to learn more about VMware’s (new) software-defined networking flagship, please check my let’s learn VMware NSX section.

So why do I believe NSX is a great chance for everyone working in the server virtualization field to extend his knowledge and become a better sysadmin, consultant, architect?

Yes sure, we are taking some network functions (routing, switching, dhcp, …) away from the current solutions and bring them closer / integrate them deeper with the hypervisor on the computing nodes. Does that mean we will get rid of classical network know-how/knowledge/people? Nope.

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Let’s learn #VMware #NSX

Version 1.1 (Date: 02/November/2015)

In the new post series let’s learn I will try to summarize useful links, classes, lectures and recommendations to learn specific topics. I used many of those resources to pass my VCP6-NV exam and thought it might be useful to share them with everyone.

NSX

In this part I am going to show you ressources to learn about VMware’s network virtualization’s product: NSX. I will try to update this post from time to time. Let’s start with initial version 1.0

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