VMware NSX-T Datacenter Architecture

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In this blog post, I will be covering the NSX-T Datacenter Architecture.
In my previous post, I have discussed the “NSX-T and features”. If you have missed reading the blog post and video, here is the link:

NSX-T Datacenter Architecture and Role of Management, Control, and Dataplane:

In my youtube video, I have discussed the NSX-T architecture and the roles or Management Plane, Control Plane and the data plane.

NSX–T Datacenter is a multi-hypervisor aware network virtualization and security platform provides services to the likes of vSphere, KVM, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Docker. It is designed to address emerging application frameworks and architectures that have heterogeneous endpoints and technology stacks.

NSX-T Datacenter Architecture:

  • NSX-T architecture has built-in separation of the Data Plane, Control Plane and Management Plane.
  • This separation is much needed for scalability, performance, resiliency, and heterogeneity.

Management Plane:

  • NSX-T Management deployed in VM form factor provides the management plane to manage the NSX-T Datacenter environment. [NSX Manager can be deployed on ESXi/KVM]
  • Advanced Clustering technology is used to provide the concurrent API requests
  • NSX-T 1.0 has 3 node Management Plane cluster, NSX-T 1.1, 2.0 and 2.1 has a single node management plane cluster
  •  The user can log into NSX-Manager via GUI/REST API
  • NSX-T management layer is completely decoupled from the vCenter Server (vCenter Independence)
  • The vCenter Server can still be added as a Compute Manager to leverage additional features.
  • NSX-T Manager persists the configuration in the CORFU database
  • Handles the platform life-cycle management tasks for the management plane, control plane and data plane nodes in the system.
  • Provides the operational tools and rich, REST APIs for user queries handling
  • Handles the authentication, monitoring, grouping and inventory collection from the Compute Manager(s)
  • Single node management cluster in NSX-T 1.1, 2.0, and 2.1

Control Plane:

  • NSX-T Controller nodes deployed in VM form factor implement the control plane [Controllers can be deployed on ESXi/KVM]
  • Keeps track of the real-time virtual networking and security state of the system
  • Control Plane is separated into Center Control Plane (CCP) and Local Control Plane (LCP)
  • The NSX Controller Nodes runs the CCP, and the Transport Node (ESXi, KVM) runs the Local Control Plane
  • The NSX-managed compute endpoints are known as Transport Nodes (ESXi, KVM & NSX Edge)
  • 3 node control-plane cluster (Cluster configuration is manual in NSX-T 1.x, 2.0, 2.1)
  • Slices the Logical Switches, Logical Routers, Transport Nodes
  • Zookeeper is used as a cluster coordination services and runs inside a container and is activated by MOOT.

Data Plane:

  • The NSX-T data plane can be enabled on ESXi, KVM.
  • The NSX-T data plane implements the hostswitch or N-VDS (NSX Managed Virtual Distributed Switch) on ESXi, KVM, and NSX Edge nodes.
  • All the CRUD operations are performed via the NSX-T Manager
  • Provides the rich networking and security services includes the Logical Switching, Distributed Logical Routing, Distributed Firewalling and Network Services like NAT, DHCP Relay/Server, and Metadata Proxy.
  • Dataplane forwarding and transformation decisions are based on the local tables populated by the Control Plane.
  • NSX-vSwitch implements the HOSTSWITCH on ESXi, OVS is leveraged to implement the HOSTSWITCH on KVM hosts
  • GENEVE protocol is used to encapsulate the packets
  • Multi-tier routing support [admin can configure Tier 1 and Tier 0 Logical Routers]

I hope this is informative for you and thank you for Reading and watching my youtube video

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