Part 3: VMWare NSX Cluster preparation and Controllers Installation

In this post will cover the Controller deployment, VTEP for VXLAN configuration, Cluster preparation and Transport zone creation which are basic for VXLAN to work.

To make it easy this series is split in to 5 parts.

Part-1 : VMWare NSX Manager 6.4.x Installation and Initial Configuration

Part 2: VMWare NSX 6.4.x Micro-Segmentation Configuration steps

Part 3: VMWare NSX Cluster preparation and Controllers Installation

Part 4: VMWare NSX Logical Switching and DLR Configuration

Part 5: VMWare NSX EDGE and OSPF Routing Configuration

Introduction

Below diagram illustrates the Distributed switch design and VTEP setup

Below diagram illustrates the  VTEP setup

Deploying NSX Controllers

Login to vCenter web client – Network and security – Installation and upgrade – Under Management – Select NSX Controller Nodes – Click on ADD to deploy Controller nodes.

Provide the IP and login password for NSX Manager.

 

Provide the Network port group to which Controllers will be connected to.

Please Note vCenter , NSX Manager and Controllers should be on same vLan

Click ADD on IP pool – Provide the IP pool details of the Controllers as shown below.

 

Select the Pool

Provide the Details for the NSX Controller and Finish.

Controller will be deployed. For production environments its recommended to deploy 3 controllers.

Please note if you deploy one for lab it will work, but don’t deploy 3 and remove 2 that will bring the cluster down and controllers will not work. Add the controllers at any point in time in future.

Controller is successfully deployed.

Preparing the Clusters for NSX

Login to vCenter web client – Network and security – Installation and upgrade – Host preparation – select the cluster and click Install to install the NSX VIB’s on the ESXi Hosts as shown below.

Configuring VTEP for VXLAN

Before Creating VTEP for VXLAN encapsulation, we need to make sure the ESXi hosts are part of the distributed switch. If not please add the hosts to distributed switch as shown below.

vCenter web client – Networking- select vDS – Add and manage hosts – Add Hosts.

Click on + new hosts to add hosts.

Select Manage Physical adapters.

Assign the physical vmNIC of the ESXi hosts to vDS uplinks as shown below.

Review the uplinks are added.

Review and finish

Now Select Host preparation and click on VXLAN – Configure as shown below.

Create new IP Pool for the VXLAN , create one as shown below.

Please note use separate vLAN for VTEP IP Pool.

Select the Distributed switch and provide MTU as minimum 1600 or more based on your network switches configuration.

Teaming Policy : Failover will act as active – standby and its easy for operations and torubleshooting. If you need mote VTEP through put then use multi VTEP’s. In my case i am using only one vtep for each ESXi host.

Review and save

After few minutes all VTEPS will be configured and IP’s will be shown as below.

When we prepare VTEP for VXLAN as port group in VDS will be created with required settings and MTU automatically.

Teaming policy is auto set to failover

Creating Segment ID and transport Zone

Now we need to provide segment ID’s and Transport Zones

Click on Edit on segment ID as shown below

Provide your segment ID, which is typically like your vLan ID . provide anything more than 5000 as till 4096 used for vLans.

Click on Transport Zone – Add as shown below.

Provide transport zone name and select Unicast , select cluster and click ADD.

Please note unicast doesn’t require any config on physical switch level like PIM and all, other two need it.

Testing VXLAN

Once it is done. Make sure your network switches are configured with MTU  1600or more.

Connect to an ESXi host and try to ping the VTEP of other hosts using vmkping command as shown below. This will make sure its pinging with MTU 1572.

Below are the complete list of posts part of the series

Part-1 : VMWare NSX Manager 6.4.x Installation and Initial Configuration

Part 2: VMWare NSX 6.4.x Micro-Segmentation Configuration steps

Part 3: VMWare NSX Cluster preparation and Controllers Installation

Part 4: VMWare NSX Logical Switching and DLR Configuration

Part 5: VMWare NSX EDGE and OSPF Routing Configuration

Hope this post is useful. Leave your comments below.