Learning VMware NSX - Second Edition

Book description

Explore the foundational components of VMware NSX

About This Book

  • Install, manage, monitor and configure your NSX deployment.
  • Understand VMware NSX's components and discover best practices to help you manage VMware NSX
  • A step by step guide that will help you elevate your skills in deploying NSX to your environment

Who This Book Is For

The book is intended for network and system administrators that have hands on experience with VMware vSphere suite of products and would like to learn more about software defined networking and implementation of NSX. The readers are also expected to have basic networking knowledge and aware of basic switching and routing fundamentals.

What You Will Learn

  • Understand software-defined networks
  • Deploy and configure VXLAN-enabled logical switches
  • Secure your environment using Distributed Firewall and Data Security
  • Configure third-party services in NSX
  • Manage, configure, and deploy edge gateway services
  • Perform various Edge operations including configuring CA certificates
  • Explore the different monitoring options to check their traffic flow

In Detail

VMware NSX is a platform for the software-defined data center. It allows complex networking topologies to be deployed programmatically in seconds. SDNs allow ease of deployment, management, and automation in deploying and maintaining new networks while reducing and in some cases completely eliminating the need to deploy traditional networks.

The book allows you a thorough understanding of implementing Software defined networks using VMware’s NSX. You will come across the best practices for installing and configuring NSX to setup your environment. Then you will get a brief overview of the NSX Core Components NSX’s basic architecture. Once you are familiar with everything, you will get to know how to deploy various NSX features. Furthermore, you will understand how to manage and monitor NSX and its associated services and features. In addition to this, you will also explore the best practices for NSX deployments.

By the end of the book, you will be able to deploy Vmware NSX in your own environment with ease. This book can come handy if you are preparing for VMware NSX certification.

Style and approach

This is an easy-to-follow guide with tested configuration steps to get you up and running quickly. This book covers the nitty-gritty of installing, configuring, managing, and monitoring VMware NSX.

Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. What this book covers
    2. What you need for this book
    3. Who this book is for
    4. Conventions
    5. Reader feedback
    6. Customer support
      1. Downloading the color images of this book
      2. Errata
      3. Piracy
      4. Questions
  2. Introduction to Network Virtualization
    1. Introducing network virtualization
    2. Concepts of network virtualization
    3. Introducing the NSX-V network virtualization platform
    4. NSX features and services
    5. NSX configuration maximums
    6. Summary
  3. NSX Core Components
    1. Introduction to NSX core components
    2. NSX manager
    3. NSX controller clusters
    4. VXLAN architecture overview
      1. A sample packet flow
    5. Transport zones
    6. NSX Edge Services Gateway
    7. Distributed firewalls
    8. Cross-vCenter NSX
    9. Summary
  4. NSX Installation and Configuration
    1. Preparing your environment
    2. Downloading and deploying NSX Manager
    3. Overview of the NSX Manager interface
    4. Configuring NSX Manager
    5. Managing NSX using the vSphere web client
    6. Deploying the control plane (Controller Virtual Machines)
    7. Deploying the data plane
    8. Summary
  5. NSX Functional Services
    1. Primary and secondary NSX managers
      1. Benefits of cross-vCenter NSX
    2. Configuring VXLAN
      1. Assigning a segment ID pool
    3. Transport zones
    4. Logical switching
      1. L2 bridges
    5. Deploying an NSX Edge logical router
    6. Edge services gateway
    7. Logical firewalls
    8. Summary
  6. Edge Services Gateway
    1. DNS and DHCP services
      1. DHCP service
      2. DNS service
    2. Routing
      1. Configuring OSPF on Edge services gateway
      2. Configuring logical distributed router OSPF
      3. Configuring BGP
      4. Configuring route redistribution
    3. Logical Edge load balancers
    4. Virtual private networks
      1. SSL VPN-Plus
      2. SSL VPN-Plus network access mode
      3. IPSEC VPN
      4. L2 VPN
    5. More Edge services and configurations
      1. Adding a sub-interface
      2. Force sync NSX Edge with NSX Manager
      3. Configuring remote syslog servers
      4. Redeploying an NSX Edge
    6. Summary
  7. Service Composer
    1. Service Composer
      1. Security groups
      2. Security policies
      3. Security group and security policy mapping
    2. Network extensibility
    3. Summary
  8. Monitoring
    1. Endpoint Monitoring
    2. Flow monitoring
    3. Traceflow
    4. Summary
  9. Managing NSX
    1. NSX Manager settings
      1. Date and time settings
      2. Syslog servers
      3. DNS servers
      4. Technical support logs
      5. SSL certificates
    2. Backup and restore
      1. NSX Manager backup
    3. NSX Manager domain registration
      1. Configuring SNMP traps
    4. Controller cluster operations
    5. Summary
  10. Conclusion

Product information

  • Title: Learning VMware NSX - Second Edition
  • Author(s): Ranjit Singh Thakurratan
  • Release date: August 2017
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781788398985