VMware NSX Cookbook

Understanding and configuring the Universal Distributed Firewall

The Universal Distributed Firewall allows centralized management of firewall rules that apply to all DFW-prepared ESXi hosts in your environment. Cross-vCenter vMotion is also supported, which enables you to move workloads or virtual machines from one vCenter server to another with a security policy that follows the VM as it migrates between data centers.

The Universal Distributed Firewall supports both layer 2 (L2) and layer 3 (L3) rules to span across vCenter domains; universal rules take precedence over local distributed firewall rules and are contained in universal firewall sections. The universal rules are populated into their corresponding L2 or L3 universal sections, ...