Requirements for NSX Data Center for vSphere Deployment

In my previous post I shared NSX Data Center For vSphere Overview and  here I will cover the requirements to deploy NSX Data Center for vSphere . I share the hardware and software requirements and other components also .

To deploy NSX Data Center for vSphere we need to fulfill below requirements

• NSX Manager Media
• Compatible version of vCenter and vSphere
• License for NSX Data Center for vSphere and vSphere Enterprise License
• vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS)
• vCenter Login credentials & Necessary resources to deploy NSX manager as per hardware requirements.
• Static IP address and DNS record for NSX Manager.
• Working Active Directory Domain , DNS , NTP
• NTP server and vCenter, ESXi and NSX manager should use this NTP and all are in sync.

System Requirements

Below are the hardware requirements for NSX Data Center for vSphere appliances.

Network Latency

You should ensure that the network latency between components is at or below the maximum latency described

Ports and Protocols Required by NSX Data Center for vSphere

The following ports must be open for NSX Data Center for vSphere to operate properly.

Note: If you have a cross-vCenter NSX environment and your vCenter Server systems are in Enhanced Linked Mode, each NSX Manager appliance must have the required connectivity to each vCenter Server system in the environment to manage any NSX Manager from any vCenter Server system

Software’s Required

First you have to check the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices  to know about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of  VMware vSphere components, including ESXi, VMware vCenter Server, and optional VMware products.

Refer release notes of  NSX Data Center for vSphere to understand the version features , known issues and fixes – VMware Docs

For an NSX Manager to participate in a cross-vCenter NSX deployment the following conditions are required:

Client and User Access

The following items are required to manage your NSX Data Center for vSphere environment:

• Forward and reverse name resolution. This is required if you have added ESXi hosts by name to the vSphere inventory, otherwise NSX Manager cannot resolve the IP addresses.
• Permissions to add and power on virtual machines
• Access to the datastore where you store virtual machine files, and the account permissions to copy files to that datastore
• Cookies must be enabled on your Web browser to access the NSX Manageruser interface.
• Port 443 must be open between the NSX Managerand the ESXi host, the vCenter Server, and the NSX Data Center for vSphere appliances to be deployed. This port is required to download the OVF file on the ESXi host for deployment.
• A Web browser that is supported for the version of vSphere Web Clientyou are using. See “Using the vSphere Web Client” in the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation for details.
• For information about using the vSphere Client(HTML5) on vSphere5 with NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4, Refer vSphere client functionality support

NSX and vSphere Distributed Switches

In an NSX domain, VMware NSX Virtual Switch is the software that operates in server hypervisors to form a software abstraction layer between servers and the physical network.

NSX Virtual Switch is based on vSphere distributed switches (VDSs), which provide uplinks for host connectivity to the top-of-rack (ToR) physical switches. As a best practice, VMware recommends that you plan and prepare your vSphere Distributed Switches before installing NSX Data Center for vSphere.

NSX services are not supported on vSphere Standard Switch. VM workloads must be connected to vSphere Distributed Switches to use NSX services and features.

A single host can be attached to multiple VDSs. A single VDS can span multiple hosts across multiple clusters. For each host cluster that will participate in NSX, all hosts within the cluster must be attached to a common VDS.