VMware NSX Installation and Configuration Part 7- VXLAN Transport Parameters Configuration

Procedure

1 In vCenter, navigate to Home > Networking & Security > Installation and select the Host Preparation tab.

2 Click Not Configured in the VXLAN column.

3 Set up logical networking. This involves selecting a VDS, a VLAN ID, an MTU size, an IP addressing mechanism, and a NIC teaming policy. The MTU for each switch must be set to 1550 or higher. By default, it is set to 1600.

If the vSphere distributed switch (VDS) MTU size is larger than the VXLAN MTU, the VDS MTU will not be adjusted down. If it is set to a lower value, it will be adjusted to match the VXLAN MTU. For example, if the VDS MTU is set to 2000 and you accept the default VXLAN MTU of 1600, no changes to the VDS MTU will be made. If the VDS MTU is 1500 and the VXLAN MTU is 1600, the VDS MTU will be changed to 1600.

Configuring VXLAN results in the creation of new distributed port groups.

Assign a Segment ID Pool and Multicast Address Range:

VXLAN segments are built between VXLAN tunnel end points (VTEPs). A hypervisor host is an example of a typical VTEP. Each VXLAN tunnel has a segment ID. You must specify a segment ID pool for each NSX Manager to isolate your network traffic. If an NSX controller is not deployed in your environment, you must also add a multicast address range to spread traffic across your network and avoid overloading a single multicast address.

Procedure:

1 In vCenter, navigate to Home > Networking & Security > Installation and select the Logical Network Preparation tab. 2 Click Segment ID > Edit.

4 If any of your transport zones will use multicast or hybrid replication mode, add a multicast address or a range of multicast addresses.

Having a range of multicast addresses spreads traffic across your network, prevents the overloading of a single multicast address, and better contains BUM replication.

Add a Transport Zone:

A transport zone controls to which hosts a logical switch can reach. It can span one or more vSphere clusters. Transport zones dictate which clusters and, therefore, which VMs can participate in the use of a particular network.

An NSX environment can contain one or more transport zones based on your requirements. A host cluster can belong to multiple transport zones. A logical switch can belong to only one transport zone. NSX does not allow connection of VMs that are in different transport zones. The span of a logical switch is limited to a transport zone, so virtual machines in different transport zones cannot be on the same Layer 2 network.

A distributed logical router cannot connect to logical switches that are in different transport zones. After you connect the first logical switch, the selection of further logical switches is limited to those that are in the same transport zone. Similarly, an edge services gateway (ESG) has access to logical switches from only one transport zone.

Procedure:

1 In vCenter, navigate to Home > Networking & Security > Installation and select the Logical Network Preparation tab.

2 Click Transport Zones and click the New Transport Zone (+) icon

3 In the New Transport Zone dialog box, type a name and an optional description for the transport zone. 4 Depending on whether you have a controller node in your environment, or you want to use multicast addresses, select the control plane mode.

Multicast: Multicast IP addresses in the physical network are used for the control plane. This mode is recommended only when you are upgrading from older VXLAN deployments. Requires PIM/IGMP in the physical network.
Unicast: The control plane is handled by an NSX controller. All unicast traffic leverages optimized headend replication. No multicast IP addresses or special network configuration is required.
Hybrid: Offloads local traffic replication to the physical network (L2 multicast). This requires IGMP snooping on the first-hop switch and access to an IGMP querier in each VTEP subnet, but does not require PIM. The first-hop switch handles traffic replication for the subnet.

5 Select the clusters to be added to the transport zone.