Learning VMware NSX - Second Edition

Ranjit Singh Thakurratan

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781788393492
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cloud Computing
• Edition: 2

Explore the foundational components of VMware NSXAbout This Book• Install, manage, monitor and configure your NSX deployment.• Understand VMware NSX's components and discover best practices to help you manage VMware NSX• A step by step guide that will help you elevate your skills in deploying NSX to your environmentWho This Book Is ForThe book is intended for network and system administrators that have hands on experience with VMware vSphere suite of products and would like to learn more about software defined networking and implementation of NSX. The readers are also expected to have basic networking knowledge and aware of basic switching and routing fundamentals.What You Will Learn• Understand software-defined networks• Deploy and configure VXLAN-enabled logical switches• Secure your environment using Distributed Firewall and Data Security• Configure third-party services in NSX• Manage, configure, and deploy edge gateway services• Perform various Edge operations including configuring CA certificates• Explore the different monitoring options to check their traffic flowIn DetailVMware NSX is a platform for the software-defined data center. It allows complex networking topologies to be deployed programmatically in seconds. SDNs allow ease of deployment, management, and automation in deploying and maintaining new networks while reducing and in some cases completely eliminating the need to deploy traditional networks.The book allows you a thorough understanding of implementing Software defined networks using VMware's NSX. You will come across the best practices for installing and configuring NSX to setup your environment. Then you will get a brief overview of the NSX Core Components NSX's basic architecture. Once you are familiar with everything, you will get to know how to deploy various NSX features. Furthermore, you will understand how to manage and monitor NSX and its associated services and features. In addition to this, you will also explore the best practices for NSX deployments.By the end of the book, you will be able to deploy Vmware NSX in your own environment with ease. This book can come handy if you are preparing for VMware NSX certification.Style and approachThis is an easy-to-follow guide with tested configuration steps to get you up and running quickly. This book covers the nitty-gritty of installing, configuring, managing, and monitoring VMware NSX.

Edge Services Gateway

We were introduced to NSX Edge services gateway in the previous chapter. We will continue to explore the deployment and configuration of different services that the Edge services gateway has to offer. We will look at configuring OSPF and BGP routing using the Edge services gateway. We will then walk through the deployment of logical Edge load balancers. The Edge services gateway also offers the ability to set up virtual private networks that enable secure access to your environment. We will look at configuring virtual private networks followed by configuring DNS and DHCP services. We will finish the chapter by looking at some more Edge services gateway configurations.

In this chapter, we will cover:

• DNS and DHCP services
• Routing
• Logical Edge load balancers
• Virtual Private Networks
• More Edge services and configurations

DNS and DHCP services

NSX Edge services gateway offers DNS and DHCP services. Let's look at configuring these services in the NSX Edge gateway.

DHCP service

NSX allows for one-to-one static NAT IP address allocation and IP address pooling. When the DHCP service is set up, it listens to any DHCP discovery requests on the internal interfaces and responds:

1. Go to Home | Networking & Security | NSX Edges, and double click an NSX Edge, and navigate to Manage | DHCP:

2. Click the + icon to add a new pool:

3. Enabling Auto Configure DNS allows you to configure the DNS for every DHCP binding automatically.
4. Enabling Lease Never Expires binds the IP to the MAC address forever.
5. Enter the Start IP and the End IP. Fill in the rest of the form with applicable values and click OK when done.
6. Now that a pool has been added, let's go ahead and enable the DHCP service.
7. Click on Enable and click Publish Changes. You can also enable logging by selecting Enable logging and setting the appropriate log level.

DNS service

NSX Edge can be configured with external DNS servers and can relay name resolution requests:

1. Go to Home | Networking & Security | NSX Edges and double click on Edge | Manage | Settings | Configuration:

2. In the DNS Configuration section, click Change:

3. Select Enable DNS service to enable the service. Enter the external DNS server names and the cache size if required. Enable logging if needed and click OK when done.

Routing

In Chapter 4, NSX Functional Services, we looked at deploying a logical router and the NSX Edge services gateway. We will now look at how to enable routing services using the NSX Edge services gateway. These services allow for more customized routing within your environment to suit your needs. You can configure the default gateway for the router and equal cost multi-path (ECMP) routing that allows for highly available deployment of multiple Edge gateways to prevent bottlenecks. You can even configure dynamic routing that updates routing tables with real-time logical network changes. All these can be set by editing the global configuration of an Edge services gateway.

Once the Edge services gateway is deployed, follow these steps for global configuration:

1. Go to Home | Networking & Configuration | NSX Edges.
2. Double click the Edge device that needs to be configured.
3. Go to Manage | Routing | Global Configuration:

4. To enable ECMP routing, click Enable. ECMP allows the next-hop packet to be forwarded to a single destination over multiple best paths that can be added statically or dynamically using routing protocols such as OSPF and BGP. These multiple paths are added as comma separated values when defining the static routes.
5. To add a default gateway, click Edit under the Default Gateway section:

6. Select an interface that will be the outgoing interface for the next hop. Set a Gateway IP. The Admin Distance is a metric used to choose which route to take when multiple routes are available for a network. The lower the metri...