NSX Manager centrally manages NSX, and is installed and run as a virtual appliance on an ESXi host. NSX Manager should not be installed on any of the clusters it is being used to manage. Instead, a dedicated cluster for management should be commissioned separately.

One NSX Manager is used to manage only one single vCenter Server setup. Both the Linux appliance and the Windows variant are supported along with the NSX Manager. The NSX manager is responsible for controlling and managing the whole virtual network and therefore it is crucially important to prevent any unplanned outages on the host it is installed on. High Availability and DRS are highly recommended to avoid any failures, and to amplify the resilience of the management appliance. All planned maintenance operations need to be performed only after migrating the host to some other functional host via vMotion.