Book Image

VMware NSX Network Essentials

By : sreejith c
Book Image

VMware NSX Network Essentials

By: sreejith c

Overview of this book

VMware NSX is at the forefront of the software-defined networking revolution. It makes it even easier for organizations to unlock the full benefits of a software-defined data center – scalability, flexibility – while adding in vital security and automation features to keep any sysadmin happy. Software alone won’t power your business – with NSX you can use it more effectively than ever before, optimizing your resources and reducing costs. Getting started should be easy – this guide makes sure it is. It takes you through the core components of NSX, demonstrating how to set it up, customize it within your current network architecture. You’ll learn the principles of effective design, as well as some things you may need to take into consideration when you’re creating your virtual networks. We’ll also show you how to construct and maintain virtual networks, and how to deal with any tricky situations and failures. By the end, you’ll be confident you can deliver, scale and secure an exemplary virtualized network with NSX.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
VMware NSX Network Essentials
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Understanding replication modes


Let's discuss replication modes in more detail and later we will connect the logical switches to virtual machines. With the addition of an NSX Controller, the requirement for multicast protocol support on physical networks is completely removed for VXLAN. There are three replication modes:

  • Multicast : When multicast replication mode is chosen for a given logical switch, NSX relies on the Layer 2 and Layer 3 multicast capability of the data center physical network to ensure VXLAN encapsulated multi-destination traffic is sent to all the VTEPs. This mode is recommended only when you are upgrading from older VXLAN deployments (vCloud network security). It requires PIM/IGMP on a physical network.

  • Unicast : The control plane is handled by the NSX Controller. All unicast traffic leverages head end replication. No multicast IP address or special network configuration is required. In unicast mode, the ESXi hosts in the NSX domain are divided into separate VTEP segments...