Monday, March 29, 2021

vSphere with Tanzu using NSX-T - Part6 - Create tag, VM storage policy, and content library

In the previous posts we discussed the following: 

Part1: Prerequisites

Part2: Configure NSX-T

Part3: Edge Cluster

Part4: Tier-0 Gateway and BGP peering

Part5: Tier-1 Gateway and Segments


At this stage, we are almost done with the networking/ NSX-T related prerequisites. Before getting into Workload Management configuration we need to create a tag, assign the tag to the datastore, create a VM storage policy, and content library.

Create and assign a tag

  • Select the datastore. Click Assign.
  • Add Tag.
  • Provide a name, and click on create new category.
  • Provide a category name and click create.
  • Click create.
  • Now a tag is created and you can assign it to the vSAN datastore.
  • Select the tag and click assign.

Create VM storage policy with tag based placement

  • Provide a name and click next.
  • Select tag based placement and click next.
  • Click the drop-down for tag category, select "Tanzu", and then click browse tags, select "Tanzu" and click next.
  • Select the compatible datastore, vSAN in this case, and click next.
  • Click finish.
  • You can now see the newly created VM storage policy.

Create content library

  • Click create.
  • Provide details and next.
  • Provide subscription URL and next.
  • Accept the SSL thumbprint by clicking yes. Select the vSAN datastore as the storage location for library contents, and next.
  • Click finish.
  • You can now see the newly created content library.

All the prerequisites are done now. The next step is to configure workload management which will be covered in the next part. Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Friday, March 19, 2021

vSphere with Tanzu using NSX-T - Part5 - Tier-1 Gateway and Segments

In the previous posts we discussed the following: 

Part1: Prerequisites

Part2: Configure NSX-T

Part3: Edge Cluster

Part4: Tier-0 Gateway and BGP peering


The next step is to create a Tier-1 Gateway and network segments. 

  • Add Tier-1 Gateway.
    • Provide name, select the linked T0 Gateway, and select the route advertisement settings.

  • Add Segment.
    • Provide segment name, connected gateway, transport zone, and subnet.
    • Here we are creating an overlay segment and the subnet CIDR 172.16.10.1/24 will be the gateway IP for this segment.

Now, let's verify whether this segment is being advertised (route advertisement) or not. Following is the screenshot from both edge nodes and you can see that the Tier-0 SR is aware of 172.16.10.0/24 network:


As Tier-0 Gateway is connected to the TOR switches via BGP, we can verify whether the TOR switches are aware about this newly created segment. 


You can see that the TORs are aware of 172.16.10.0/24 network via BGP. Let's connect a VM to this segment, assign an IP address, and test network connectivity. 


You can also view the network topology from NSX-T.


This is the traffic flow: VM - Network segment - Tier-1 Gateway - Tier-0 Gateway - BGP peering - TOR switches - NAT VM - External network.

Hope this was useful. Cheers!