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!

vSphere with Tanzu using NSX-T - Part4 - Tier-0 Gateway and BGP peering

In the previous posts we discussed the following: 

Part1: Prerequisites
Part2: Configure NSX-T
Part3: Edge Cluster

The next step is to create a Tier-0 Gateway, configure its interfaces, and BGP peer with the L3 TOR switches. Following is a high-level logical representation of this configuration:

Configure Tier-0 Gateway

Before creating the T0-Gateway, we need to create two segments.

• Add Segments.
• Create a segment "ls-uplink-v54"
• VLAN: 54
• Transport Zone: "edge-vlan-tz"
• Create a segment "ls-uplink-v55"
• VLAN: 55
• Transport Zone: "edge-vlan-tz"

• Add Tier-0 Gateway.
• Provide the necessary details as shown below.

• Add 4 interfaces and configure them as per the logical diagram given above.
• edge-01-uplink1 - 192.168.54.254/24 - connected via segment ls-uplink-v54
• edge-01-uplink2 - 192.168.55.254/24 - connected via segment ls-uplink-v55

• edge-02-uplink1 - 192.168.54.253/24 - connected via segment ls-uplink-v54
• edge-02-uplink2 - 192.168.55.253/24 - connected via segment ls-uplink-v55

• Verify the status is showing success for all the 4 interfaces that you added.

• Routing and multicast settings of T0 are as follows:

• You can see a static route is configured. The next hop for the default route 0.0.0.0/0 is set to 192.168.54.1. 

• The next hop configuration is given below.

• BGP settings of T0 are shown below.

• BGP Neighbor config:

• Verify the status is showing success for the two BGP Neighbors that you added.

• Route re-distribution settings of T0:

• Add route re-distribution.

• Set route re-distribution.

Now, the T0 configuration is complete. The next step is to configure BGP on the Dell S4048-ON TOR switches.

Configure TOR Switches

---On TOR A---
conf
router bgp 65500
neighbor 192.168.54.254 remote-as 65400 #peering to T0 edge-01 interface
neighbor 192.168.54.254 no shutdown
neighbor 192.168.54.253 remote-as 65400 #peering to T0 edge-02 interface
neighbor 192.168.54.253 no shutdown
neighbor 192.168.54.3 remote-as 65500 #peering to TOR B in VLAN 54
neighbor 192.168.54.3 no shutdown
maximum-paths ebgp 4
maximum-paths ibgp 4

---On TOR B---
conf
router bgp 65500
neighbor 192.168.55.254 remote-as 65400 #peering to T0 edge-01 interface
neighbor 192.168.55.254 no shutdown
neighbor 192.168.55.253 remote-as 65400 #peering to T0 edge-02 interface
neighbor 192.168.55.253 no shutdown
neighbor 192.168.54.2 remote-as 65500 #peering to TOR A in VLAN 54
neighbor 192.168.54.2 no shutdown
maximum-paths ebgp 4
maximum-paths ibgp 4

---Advertising ESXi mgmt and VM traffic networks in BGP on both TORs---

conf
router bgp 65500
network 192.168.41.0/24
network 192.168.43.0/24

Thanks to my friend and vExpert Harikrishnan @hari5611 for helping me with the T0 configs and BGP peering on TORs. Do check out his blog https://vxplanet.com/. 

Verify BGP Configurations

The next step is to verify the BGP configs on TORs using the following commands:

show running-config bgp

show ip bgp summary

show ip bgp neighbors

Follow the VMware documentation to verify the BGP connections from a Tier-0 Service Router. In the below screenshot you can see that both Edge nodes have the BGP neighbors 192.168.54.2 and 192.168.55.3 with state Estab.

In the next article, I will talk about adding a T1 Gateway, adding new segments for apps, connecting VMs to the segments, and verify connectivity to different internal and external networks. I hope this was useful. Cheers!

vSphere with Tanzu using NSX-T - Part3 - Edge Cluster

In the previous post, we went through basic NSX-T configurations. The next step is to deploy Edge VMs and create an Edge cluster. Before creating Edge VMs, we need to create two trunk port groups on the VDS using the VCSA web UI. Uplinks of the Edge VMs will be connected to these two trunk port groups.

• Create 2 trunk port groups on the VDS.
• "Trunk01-NSXT-Edge"
• "Trunk02-NSXT-Edge"

• Add Edge Transport Nodes.
• Create two Edge VMs "edge-01, edge-02".
• Click ADD EDGE VM, follow the wizard, and provide all the details.

• Click Finish. Follow the same process and deploy one more Edge VM.

• The next step is to create an Edge Cluster "edge-cluster-01" and add the two Edge VMs to it.

The NSX-T Edge Cluster is now ready. Next, we have to add a Tier-0 Gateway and configure BGP peering with the router or L3 TOR switches. This will be covered in the next part. Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Related posts

Part1: Prerequisites
Part2: Configure NSX-T