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

The VLAN packet


Before trying to understand VXLAN, let's go back to the fundamentals of a VLAN packet. How does  tagging work in a VLAN packet? It's very simple concept: 4 bytes are inserted into the Ethernet header field (IEEE), which are a combination of a 2-byte Tag Protocol Identifier (TPID) and 2 bytes of Tag Control Information (TCI). The priority field is a 3-bit field that allows information priority to be encoded in the overall frame, 0 being the lowest priority and 8 the highest value. CFI is typically a bit used for compatibility between Ethernet and token ring networks and if the value is 0, those are Ethernet switches. Last but not the least, we have the VLAN field - VID:

The act of creating a VLAN on a switch involves defining a set of switch ports, and end devices get connected to these ports. They all become part of that VLAN domain which eventually stops a broadcast not to be forwarded to another set of VLANs. I know whatever we have discussed so far is something which...