VMware NSX-V

VMware NSX

VMware NSX is a network virtualization and security platform that enables the virtual cloud network, a software-defined approach to networking that extends across data centers, clouds and application frameworks.

VMware NSX is suitable for all infrastructure types:

• Multi-cloud environments
• On-premises data centers
• Bare metal servers
• Containerized workloads

VMware NSX-V

VMware NSX-V is a software-defined networking solution is built around the VMware vSphere ecosystem and includes the requirements that you would expect in VMware vSphere such as having a vCenter Server and ESXi hosts.

This product depends on VMware vSphere and connection with vCenter. Once NSX-V pairs with vCenter, the integration with vSphere is seamless.

NSX-V Main Components:

The primary components of VMware NSX-V are:

• NSX-V Manager
• NSX-V Controller
• NSX-V Edge
• Logical Switch
• Transport Zone

NSX-V Manager: It provides the graphical user interface (GUI) and the REST APIs for creating, configuring, and monitoring NSX components, such as controllers, logical switches, and edge services gateways.

NSX-V Controller: It is an advanced distributed state management system that provides control plane functions for NSX logical switching and routing functions.

NSX-V Edges: The services gateway gives you access to all NSX Edge services such as firewall, NAT, DHCP, VPN, load balancing, and high availability. You can install multiple Edge services gateway virtual appliances in a datacenter. Each Edge service gateway virtual appliance can have a total of ten uplink and internal network interfaces.

Logical Switch: An NSX Data Center for vSphere logical switch reproduces switching functionality (unicast, multicast, broadcast) in a virtual environment completely decoupled from underlying hardware. Logical switches are similar to VLANs, in that they provide network connections to which you can attach virtual machines.

Transport Zone: A transport zone defines a collection of hosts that can communicate with each other across a physical network infrastructure.

Benefits of NSX-V

VMware NSX reproduces the entire network model in software, enabling any network topology – from simple to complex multi-tier networks – to be created and provisioned in seconds, independent of underlying hardware. It brings networking and security closer to the application wherever it is running.

Prerequisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 10.0 and above (or) OpsRamp Cluster gateway

• Ensure that “adapter integrations” add-on is enabled in client configuration. Once enabled you can see VMware-NSX-V integration under Setup » Integrations » Adapter section

Install the integration

1. From All Clients, select a client.

2. Go to Setup > Integrations > Integrations.

3. From Available Integrations, select Adapter > VMware-NSX-V. The Install VMware-NSX-V Integration popup appears.
   Note: Ensure that Adapter addon is enabled at client and partner levels.

4. Enter the following information:
   a. Name: Name of the integration
   b. Upload Logo: Optional logo for the integration.
   c. GateWay Profiles: Select a gateway management profile to associate with the client.
   

5. Click Install. The Integration page displays the installed integration.

Configure the integration

1. In CONFIGURATION section, click + Add.

2. On Create Adapter Configuration, enter:

   • Name: Configuration name.
   • Protocol: Protocol
   • NSX-V Manager IP Address/Host Name: IP address or host name of the target.
   • Port: Port
   • Notification Alerts: Select TRUE or FALSE.
     
     

3. In the Credential section, select Custom and enter the Username and Password.

4. In the Resource Types & Metrics section, select the metrics you want and configure for availability and alert conditions.

5. In the Discovery Schedule section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:

   • Minutes
   • Hourly
   • Daily
   • Weekly
   • Monthly
     
     

6. In the Monitoring Schedule section, configure how frequently the monitoring action should trigger.

7. Click Save.

After saving the integration, NSX-V resources are discovered and monitoring is enabled as specified by the configuration profile.

The configuration is saved and displayed on the page.

You can perform the actions manually, like Discovery, Monitoring or even Disable the configuration.

The discovered resource(s) are displayed in the Infrastructure page under Software Defined Network Resource, with Native Resource Type as NSX-V Manager.

The controller(s) and logical switch(s) are displayed under Components:

Hierarchy of NSX-V resources:

NSX-V Manager
— Controller
        — Virtual Machine
        — Controller Cluster
        — DataStore
        — Transport Zones
        — Edges
            — Firewall
            — VNIC
— Logical Switches

Supported metrics for NSX-V

Supported Version: NSX-V REST API 6.4

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• The metrics can be used to monitor NSX-V resources and can generate alerts based on the threshold values.
• App can handle Critical/Recovery failure alert notifications for the below 2 cases when user enables Notification Alerts in configuration:
  • Connectivity Exception
  • Authentication Exception
• App cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on the above alerts

Related Topics

VMware NSX-T