VMware NSX-V

Introduction

VMware NSX-V is a software-defined networking solution 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.

Pre-requisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 12.0.1 and above.

Hierarchy of VMware NSX V resources

      • NSX-V Manager
              • NSX-V Controller
                      • NSX-V Controller Cluster
                      • NSX-V Controller DataStore
                      • NSX-V Controller Virtual Machine
                      • NSX-V Transport Zone
                      • NSX-V Edge
                              • NSX-V Edge Firewall
                              • NSX-V Edge VNIC
              • NSX-V Logical Switches

Default monitoring configurations

VMware NSX-V have default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global metrics in OpsRamp. Users can customize these default monitoring configurations as per their business use cases by cloning respective global templates and global Device Management Policies. OpsRamp recommends doing this activity before installing the application to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policy

   OpsRamp has a Global Device Management Policy for each Native Type of VMware NSX-V. You can find these Device Management Policies at Setup -> Resources -> Device Management Policies -> Search with suggested names in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: vmware-nsx-v NSX-V Edge Firewall - 2 (i.e, appName = vmware-nsx-v, nativeType = NSX-V Edge Firewall, version = 2)

2. Default Global Templates available

   OpsRamp has a Global template for each Native Type of VMware NSX-V. You can find these templates at Setup -> Monitoring -> Templates -> Search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: vmware-nsx-v NSX-V Manager Template - 2(i.e, appName = vmware-nsx-v, nativeType = NSX-V Manager , version = 2)

3. Default Global Monitors available

   OpsRamp has a Global Monitors for each Native Type which has monitoring support. You can find those monitors at Setup -> Monitoring -> Monitors -> Search with suggested names in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: NSX-V Manager Monitor vmware-nsx-v NSX-V Manager 2(i.e, monitorKey = NSX-V Manager Monitor, appName = vmware-nsx-v, nativeType = NSX-V Manager, version = 2)

Configure and install the integration

1. From All Clients, select a client
2. Go to Setup > Integrations and Apps.
3. Click Manage Apps.
   Notes:
   • If there are already installed applications, it will redirect to the INSTALLED APPS page, where all the installed applications are displayed.
   • If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the ADD APP page.

4. Click + ADD on the INSTALLED INTEGRATIONS page. The AVAILABLE INTEGRATIONS AND APPS page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.
   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.

5. Click ADD in the VMware NSX-V application.
6. In the Configurations page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
7. Enter the below mentioned BASIC INFORMATION:

Notes:

• By default the Is Secure checkbox is selected.
• Select App Failure Notifications: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure that is, Connectivity Exception, Authentication Exception.

8. Select the below mentioned CUSTOM ATTRIBUTES:

Note: The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the integration. You can add a maximum of five custom attributes (key and value pair).

9. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:
   • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
   • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.
10. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:
    • Minutes
    • Hourly
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • Monthly
11. Click ADD.

12. Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it. Note: From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration.
13. Click NEXT.
14. In the Installation page, select an existing registered gateway profile, and click FINISH.

The application is now installed and displayed on the Installed Integration page. Use the search field to find the installed application.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select the VMware NSX-V application.

View the VMware NSX-V details

The discovered resource(s) are displayed in Infrastructure > Resources. You can navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details, and the Metrics tab to view the metric details for VMware NSX-V.

Resource Filter Input Keys

VMware NSX V application Resources are filtered and discovered based on below keys.

Supported Alert Custom Macros

Customize the alert subject and description with below macros then it will generate alert based on customisation.
Supported macros keys:

                                ${resource.name}

                                ${resource.ip}

                                ${resource.mac}

                                ${resource.aliasname}

                                ${resource.os}

                                ${resource.type}

                                ${resource.dnsname}

                                ${resource.alternateip}

                                ${resource.make}

                                ${resource.model}

                                ${resource.serialnumber}

                                ${resource.systemId}

                                ${parent.resource.name}

                                ${Custome Attributes in the resource}

Supported metrics for NSX-V

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• The metric can be used to monitor NSX-V resources and can generate alerts based on the threshold values.
• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure alert notifications for below two cases when user enables App Failure Notifications in configuration
  • Connectivity Exception
  • Authentication Exception
• Application will not send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification until the already existing critical alert is recovered.
• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts. Metrics can be used to monitor VMware NSX-V resources and can generate alerts based on the threshold values.
• OpsRamp has provided 443 as default Port value for processing NSX-V Rest APIs. Users can modify this value from the application configuration page at any point of time if required.
• Component level thresholds can be configured on each resource level.
• No support of showing activity log and applied time.
• No support for the option to get Latest snapshot metric.

Related Topics

VMware NSX-T