nsx Archives - Page 2 of 9

Storing the VMware NSX config in version control

April 30, 2018 / Martijn / 4 Comments

Almost any organization that I’ve had the pleasure of talking with, uses Git either for code repositories where their developers work or for doing version control on their infrastructure systems. Git is an excellent version control tool and is widely used for both developers and also infrastructure configuration. This post goes into how to put the VMware NSX configuration into version control using Git.

Not all infrastructure components (server systems, network devices, etc) have a proper audit log on what happens in the configuration and who is doing what exactly. This is where version control can lend a helping hand … Read more

VMware NSX & OTRS – Automating Security with Help Desk Systems

March 23, 2018 / Martijn / 0 Comments

Over the last couple of months, Sander, Anne Jan and I have been working on a security whitepaper that lays out a practical implementation of zero trust while interfacing with a helpdesk system. In this case, OTRS.

It’s all about how engineers can get access to servers to perform maintenance, once your environment is properly micro-segmented. This whitepaper talks about the challenges you have when you’re micro-segmented and how you can resolve these challenges. Using OTRS as an example, this document lays out how to configure a help desk system like OTRS to interface with NSX to gain network … Read more

GRE Tunnels & Dynamic Routing in NSX 6.4

February 23, 2018 / Martijn / 2 Comments

There was a line in the NSX 6.4 release notes that caught my eye: “Support for BGP and static routing over GRE tunnels.” – First thought was “awesome, dynamic routing over a VPN”. But then I realized that that GRE tunnel in itself is a new feature as well, which the release notes don’t really mention. The VMware Docs website also doesn’t mention anything about it.

After a bit of digging, it appears that this feature has been added primarily to support the VMware on AWS architecture and connectivity towards that platform. But that doesn’t mean us mortals can’t use … Read more

NSX for vSphere 6.4 is here (and it’s massive!)

January 16, 2018 / Martijn / 0 Comments

Just as the title says, NSX-v 6.4 has just dropped. I my opinion, they should’ve called it NSX-v 7.0 though, considering the amount of new and cool stuff that is in there. I’ll go through the most prolific new and shiny features below.

Distributed Firewall Layer 7 Functionality – App ID

Traditionally the DFW could handle layer 2 to layer 4 rules. With NSX 6.4, there is some layer 7 functionality which becomes available. This is done by pushing a new VIB to ESXi hosts which looks inside the traffic flows. This new module will recognise App ID inside network … Read more

Restoring a NSX Edge Gateway

December 23, 2017 / Martijn / 0 Comments

NSX Manager has a backup and restore functionality. That process creates a backup of the entire NSX fabric and puts that backup on a remote (s)FTP server. All configuration is available within that backup, the Edge configuration is not separate. Being a good IT-citizen, of course the backup is one of the configurations you do during the installation, so you always have a backup available.

I have a couple points for this post:

You can restore a NSX Manager backup non-disruptively (*),
When you restore a NSX Manager backup, existing NSX Edges are not effected and continue to operate,
If

Host Preparation Troubleshooting Enhancements with NSX 6.3.5

November 23, 2017 / Martijn / 0 Comments

VMware NSX 6.3.5 was released last week. This is a maintenance release and addresses 32 issues in previous versions. You can find the release notes here.

One thing caught my eye which is a very welcome addition to 6.3.5;

Host prep now has troubleshooting enhancements, including additional information for “not ready” errors

As the release notes don’t go into detail what that exactly means, I did some digging. From 6.3.5 and above, the NSX UI will now show the failure messages from EAM when the host preparation fails. For instance, you’ll see if the communication between EAM and the … Read more

New VMware Fling – Autopology (Drag and Drop NSX Network Topologies? Yes Please!)

May 16, 2017 / Martijn / 0 Comments

The VMware Fling labs is one of my favourite things, as it brings some awesome new tech straight from VMware R&D. Some of these flings flow to the product cycles (remember the HTML5 client, now default in vCenter?). And they did it again!

Ever since I’ve seen an internal session about this product, I’ve been anxiously waiting for it to be released (one way or another). Autopology just dropped on the Flings website. Autopology is a translator between your network drawings and the real-life configuration. It is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor where you can create drawings of a network topology and … Read more

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