This is part 4 of 20 blogs I am writing covering the exam prep guide for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Network Virtualisation Deployment (3V0-643)  VCAP6-NV certification.

At the time of writing there is no VCAP Design exam stream, thus you’re automatically granted the new VMware Certified Implementation Expert – Network Virtualisation (VCIX6-NV) certification by successfully passing the VCAP6-NV Deploy exam.

Read part 3 here.

This blogs covers:
Section 1 – Prepare VMware NSX Infrastructure
Objective 1.3 – Configure and Manage Transport Zones

• Create Transport Zones according to a deployment plan
• Configure the control plane mode for a Transport Zone
• Add clusters to Transport Zones
• Remove clusters from Transport Zones

Create Transport Zones according to a deployment plan

So you have clusters of hosts, they have been prepared for NSX and you have configured the VXLAN Transport network.

Now, what’s the glue that allows a NSX Logical Switch to be spanned over multiple clusters of hosts? It’s the Transport Zone.

The Transport Zone (TZ) determines how far a NSX Logical Switch can span. E.g. you create a TZ called ‘DMZ TZ’ which you span across a limited number of hosts.

You might create another TZ that spans all clusters in the data centre; meaning any Logical Switches, Distributed Logical Routers or Edge Service Gateways connected to it are available data center-wide.

Clusters can be a member of multiple TZs.

Best practice is to make sure your TZs align to the vDS boundary, otherwise you can end up in a situation where VMs on a specific Logical Switch cannot access Distributed Logical Router (DLR) interfaces – as shown in this VMware diagram.

To Create a Transport Zone (TZ), log into the vSphere Web Client.

Click Networking and Security, then Installation followed by the Transport Zones tab.

Click the + sign to add a new TZ, enter your information and click OK.

I am creating a TZ called ‘Global_TZ‘ that spans my Compute and Edge clusters.

Note: In the above diagram I have selected the default ‘Unicast‘ option for replication. The following section covers this.

You can now see the configured TZ.

Note: In a cross-vCenter NSX implementation make sure you select the correct NSX Manger to apply your changes.

 

Configure the Control Plane Mode for a Transport Zone

There are 3 different modes. To modify the Control Plane mode for a TZ, you can edit the TZ..

The following is from the VMware NSX Installation Guide:

Offloading multicast processing to the physical network reduces pressure on the VTEPs as the environment scales out. For large environments, Hybrid mode is recommended to Unicast. Multicast is used only when migrating from existing VXLAN solutions.

 

Add clusters to Transport Zones

This is a pretty simple exercise.

Log into the vSphere Web Client.

Click Networking and Security, then Installation followed by the Transport Zones tab.

Select the specific TZ that you want to add a cluster to.

Click the blue cog and select ‘Connect Clusters‘, then add the specific cluster you want.

 

Remove clusters from Transport Zones

Again, pretty simple.

Log into the vSphere Web Client.

Click Networking and Security, then Installation followed by the Transport Zones tab.

Select the specific TZ that you want to remove a cluster from.

Click the blue cog and select ‘Disconnect Clusters‘, then select the specific cluster you want to remove.

That wraps up objective 1.3. For the exam I guess they will probably get us to create TZs, edit and maybe join clusters to TZs.

Read the relevant bits from the Install Guide and the Administration Guide.

Coming up in episode 5

Section 2 – Create and Manage VMware NSX Virtual Networks

Objective 2.1 – Create and Manage Logical Switches Skills and Abilities

• Create/Delete Logical Switches
• Assign and configure IP addresses
• Connect a Logical Switch to an NSX Edge
• Deploy services on a Logical Switch
• Connect/Disconnect virtual machines to/from a Logical Switch
• Test Logical Switch connectivity

Come for the journey.

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