Dell EMC Network Virtualization Handbook for VMware NSX Enterprise 6.2.x

Published September 2016

The following document covers the standard reference architecture of networking virtualization with Dell infrastructure and provides a configuration guide of the Dell S6000 Layer 2 hardware VTEP gateway as a handbook.

Thanks to the success of server virtualization over the last decade, new needs have now come to the forefront: to virtualize the network or to decouple the network services from the underlying physical infrastructure. Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) is the term given to the ability to logically represent a physical infrastructure and its network services within software. The same benefits that made server virtualization so successful are now also driving network virtualization and the SDDC. Key drivers include:
   

• Speed of deployment/migration, flexibility, and agility
     
• Automation
     
• Minimized downtime
     
• Normalization of underlying hardware

  vCenter Suite has been the traditional control plane of virtual machines running on a pool of server hardware. The control plane benefits from network virtualization using VMware NSX, the marketing leading implementation of network virtualization. NSX delivers the operational model of a virtual machine with networking and security functionality embedded directly in the hypervisor. NSX offers a centralized fine-grained policies to provision and configure multiple isolated logical networks that run on a single physical network.

  Logical networks are decoupled from physical network services like routing and switching, giving service providers and enterprises the flexibility to place a VM anywhere in the data center. Along with this connectivity between VMs and different tiers, NSX helps add layer 4-7 network services to secure different logical domains. Micro-segmentation is a concept based on the premise of isolation and the zero-trust environment created by the combination of different network services. This paper will discuss the physical layer components of server connectivity inside the rack to the networking infrastructure. Next, it addresses the Layer 2 and Layer 3 network setup in the underlying physical network. Building a scalable networking fabric is one of the key steps in the Software-Defined Data Center. This document discusses how to build a scalable underlying network for VMware NSX-based network virtualization.

  ---

  Download

  ---

  For more related Networking Guides click here to return to our main page