Install VMware NSX-T 2.4 Manager with vSphere Client

In this article, we will look at how to deploy the VMware NSX-T 2.4 Data center. There are some architectural changes with the way you deploy the NSX Manager and NSX Controller Nodes (there are many architectural changes to introduce new features). In NSX-T 2.4 both the NSX Manager and NSX Controllers are merged into a single Unified Appliance, which means both the management plane and control plane runs on the same virtual machine. Even though both management plane and control plane runs on the same appliance, the functionality of the management plane and control plane has not changed. The NSX Manager still pushes the configuration to the Control Plane, and control plane configures the data plane.

NSX-T 2.4 Manager and Roles:

When a NSX Manager virtual machine is deployed through the NSX Unified Appliance OVA, the virtual machine runs the NSX Policy Manager, NSX Manager and NSX Controller on the same virtual machine. This new architecture eliminates the need to deploy multiple NSX Managers and NSX Controller Virtual machines.

For the high availability, you can still deploy a maximum of three NSX Manager virtual machines and configure them in a cluster.

You can even use external loadbalancer with VIP to redistribute the load between the NSX Manager nodes.

NSX-T 2.4 Manager Configuration Size :

Size	Memory (GBs)	#vCPUs	Disk (GBs)	Deployment
Extra Small	8	2	200	Only supported for Cloud Service Manager (NSX Cloud)
Small	16	4	200	For Lab and PoC
Medium	24	6	200	Production deployment – up to 64 hypervisor hosts
Large	48	12	200	Production deployment – more than 64 hypervisors hosts

Download NSX-T 2.4 Manager :

Download the nsx-unified-appliance-2.4.0.0.0.12456291.ova file from the following URL to deploy NSX Manager in the vSphere environment.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=673&rPId=25995&downloadGroup=NSX-T-240

Install NSX-T 2.4 Manager with vSphere Client

You can use the vSphere Client (or) vSphere Web Client (or) OVFTOOL command line to deploy NSX Manager or the Cloud Service Manager as a virtual appliance. In this blog post, I will focus deploying the VMware NSX-T 2.4 Manager with the vSphere Client.

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-01 — Click Deploy OVF Template

On the Select an OVF Template wizard, choose URL or Local File.

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-02 — Select OVF Template

On the Select a name and folder wizard, type the Virtual machine name and select the Destination folder for NSX Manager virtual machine

Select a name and Folder

On the Select a compute resource wizard, select the ESXi Cluster or host

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-04 — Select a Compute Resource

On the Review details wizard, verify the template details and click Next

On the Configuration wizard, select a deployment configuration

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-06 — NSX-T-2.4 Manager-Configuration

On the Select storage wizard, select virtual disk format and datastore and click Next

On the Select networks wizard, select the Source Network.

Customize template:

On the Customize template wizard, set the System Root User password and then scroll down to set additional parameters.

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-09 — Customize template-01

On the Customize template wizard, set the CLI “admin” User password and then scroll down to set additional parameters.

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-10 — Customize template-02

On the Customize template wizard, set the CLI “audit” User password and then scroll down to set additional parameters.

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-11 — Customize template-03

On the Customize template wizard, if you want to change default username like audit and admin then specify the username for audit and admin. Otherwise leave it blank.
Enter the Hostname and Select the Role and specify the Default IPv4 Gateway and scroll down to set additional parameters.

NSX-T-2.4 Manager-12 — Customize template-04

Enter the Management Network IPv4 Address, Management Network Netmask, DNS Server list and Domain Search List
Enter the Space separated NTP Server List, Enable SSH