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

Packet capturing and analysis


Starting from ESXi 5.5, the pktcap-uw tool is embedded inside the hypervisor. Some of you will be familiar with the tcpdump tool, which was already available in ESXi; pktcap is a replacement for the same. The prime reason for integrating the pktcap tool captures packets are every layer which is extremely essential in NSX world. So, we are no longer limited by capturing packets at the vmkernel layer. I have been a big fan of this tool starting from the vCloud networking and security days and I strongly believe most of us will like this tool. Before jumping into packet capturing, let's be clear about the following points:

  • Pktcap, by default, collects only incoming packets, and it is unidirectional. So, if we want to capture both ingress and egress traffic, we need to add certain parameters. If not, the whole purpose of capturing the packet will be defeated.

  • Traffic direction is mentioned as -dir 0 for ingress packets.

  • Traffic direction is mentioned as -dir 1 for...