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VMware Cloud Foundation Architect specializing in VCF, NSX, and Infrastructure Automation

Author: Rutger Blom

  • Add NSX-T Tags To Virtual Machines with PowerShell

    NSX tags on virtual machines often play a fundamental role in a NSX micro-segmentation security framework. Tags are used as the criteria for security group membership which in turn are used as source or destination in distributed firewall policy rules. Tagging virtual machines in NSX-T can be done in a number of ways. We essentially…

  • Setting Up NSX-T Backup

    One of the first things to configure after deploying the NSX Manager nodes is backup. No NSX-T implementation should ever get configured let alone go live without a working backup (and restore) in place. Let’s have a look at how to set this up. Backup target NSX-T uses SFTP (TCP port 22) to transfer backup…

  • vIDM SSL Thumbprint Trouble

    For Role Based Access Control (RBAC) in NSX-T we need to configure integration with VMware Identity Manager. There’s an excellent VMware blog post that explains in detail how to set up vIDM and how to configure the integration in NSX Manager. The problem When setting this up myself I ran into a small problem that…

  • Upgrade to NSX-T 2.4

    Back in February VMware announced version 2.4 of NSX-T calling it a “landmark release in the history of NSX”. The new and enhanced features introduced in version 2.4 are indeed impressive: Converged NSX Manager appliance – bringing together management, policy, and central control services in one appliance with 3-node clustering support. Thus we now have…

  • NSX-T Lab – Part 6

    Welcome to the final part of this series. We’ve come a long way. After configuring North-South dynamic routing between the Tier-0 logical router and the “physical” (pfSense) router in part 5, it’s now time to add a Tier-1 logical router and some logical switches. Tier-1 logical router The purpose of Tier-1 routers is to facilitate…

  • NSX-T Lab – Part 5

    Hi there again! I’ve made some good progress with my NSX-T lab deployment, but there’s still a lot to do! The plan Back in part three I made a high-level plan for the NSX data plane deployment. Let’s have a look: Prepare the vSphere distributed switch – part three Configure transport zones – part three…

  • NSX-T Lab – Part 4

    NSX-T Lab – Part 4

    Welcome back! I’m still busy installing NSX-T in my lab. I prepared the vSphere distributed switch, configured the NSX transport zones, and created the transit logical switches in part three. I will now continue with setting up the NSX transport nodes. Hypervisor transport nodes I’ll start with turning my ESXi hosts into NSX transport nodes.…

  • NSX-T Lab – Part 3

    Welcome back! I’m in the middle of installing NSX-T in my vSphere lab environment. In part one I installed NSX Manager, in part two I deployed the NSX Controller Cluster. Now it’s time start working on what it’s all about: The data plane. High-level overview Setting up a complete NSX-T data plane involves installing and…

  • NSX-T Lab – Part 2

    Welcome back! I’m in the process of installing NSX-T in my lab environment. So far I have deployed NSX Manager which is the central management plane component of the NSX-T platform.Today I will continue the installation and add a NSX-T controller to the lab environment. Control plane The control plane in NSX is responsible for…

  • NSX-T Lab – Part 1

    Learning by doing is my preferred method of getting to know a product or technology I haven’t worked with before. Take NSX-T for example. On the surface NSX-T seems to be just another flavour of network virtualisation technology by VMware. But having a closer look I quickly realised NSX-T is quite a different beast compared…