NSX Firewall Rules using Application Rule Manager (ARM)

Hi All,

Recently I was engaged in a project for NSX Brownfield deployment and the requirement was to migrate the citrix environment to VMware Horizon View desktops.

So the challenge we had was to find out what is in use by the Citrix VMs in the existing environment from the service/port perspective so it will be easier to find out the communication path between twoVMs (for test for now) but it can be scaled all the way to the cluster level if needs to.

So there are few ways this can be achieved and I will cover the same in the series of 3 parts.

1) Using ARM (Application Rule Manager) which will be covered in this post
2) Using vRNI (vRealize Network Insight) which will be the next post
3) Using LI (vRealize Log Insight) which will be the last post of this series

So lets get started.

We are running the latest NSX Manager version 6.3.1.

Now I assume that the readers are familiar with NSX Manager and other components of VMware vSphere as I will be using the terminologies quite frequently and also the acronyms of the same.


So once you go to Networking and Security and you need to click on Flow Monitoring to see the option of application Rule Manager

Im showing here the screen shot of the same.

Then you need to generate the flows by doing certain activities to invoke the traffic to use particular ports / services.

So now lets dig deeper in to ARM.

lets say I want to know the flows between two VMs so I will start with New Session and then give a name to the session.

Next option is to select the source and here you have only two options to choose from as a Object Type

1) Virtual Machine

2) vNIC

So I will go with VM and provide a name of the VM.

Thats the only thing you need to provide and once you click OK then it will start gathering the flows from the VM.




Now click Stop to finish collecting the flows and once you highlight any flows under the View Flows option then you will see two options under Actions.





So either you can hide records or you can create a Firewall Rule based on the flow captured.

After I selected Create Firewall Rule, then I will go to the tab "Firewall Rules" and check what rule is created.

So before you publish the rule you can modify the Rule with necessary details e,g Source, Destination, Service, Applied To, Action and Log.

You can create multiple sessions and just select the drop down to see/view specific Flow details about a particular session.

Name the session properly so you can see what you have captured. In the above screen shot as you can see I've given the name tst-h-ic-blk which I provided to find out the icmp block for horizon and the rule is test rule.

You can keep the name with the function of the VM/server you are going to create the firewall rule for, so it will be easier to understand take actions on the particular rule set.





Once you create the rule then you need to go the Firewall Rule tab and publish it and it will be immediately come in to the effect. Which you can verify under Firewall section on the left.




So as you can see, it will be added as a new Section to give the name to the rule properly so it will be meaningful.

If there are more than one service you can see in the flow then click on the small gear icon on the right besides the services and you can see all the services captured.




Now from the product use perspective this will be a trouble when you have to find out the traffic patterns on a large environment (having no other options of at the cluster level or host level options) so you have only one choice of finding out per VM basis and then go thro each flow collected and create the rule/s.

May be I can suggest a feature request to VMware about incorporating other options when dealing with multiple items and have a single option to create Firewall rule / rules based on the collected flows. This can be based on the at the Data Center/ Cluster Level which can be considered in aggregation of all the flows captured.

It will help the Admin of the environment to allow the default communication ports which got captured after running the flow capturing for enough duration which will allow to capture all possible traffic coming from X and going to Y or Z.

Hoping that in next version this improvement will get incorporated to ease the process of utilizing only ARM to recommend the rules and go with the same.

Hope this helps.

In Next post I will cover vRNI to find out how you can utilize the same to create Firewall Rule/s.

Please share and care.

Thanks for your time.

vMotion of NSX EDGE gotcha

Hi,

Recently I was working on a brown field deployment of NSX and ran into an issue where we were not able to connect to the DHCP server from a Logical Switch (which means the VMs are not getting IP addresses from DHCP server) which was a key.

If we put the VM on a regular VDS dvportgroup it gets the DHCP IP correctly.

So we started looking in to the issue further and engage VMware GSS to look in to the issue.

During the troubleshooting we had to decide the location of Edge and try moving it to a different host to verify if its not hitting any uplink issue.

As we were using vCenter Web Client and as soon as we tried migrating (vMotion) it to another host and we were prompted with the NIC mapping page. Where we need to map each interface exists on the NSX Edge to a corresponding portgroup or dvportgroup. Now we have only limited number of portgroups/dvportgroups existed on the Cluster and we could not map all the internal interfaces (which gets created by default on the Edge appliance).

The source were listed as "None" so not sure where to map them.

So we ended up using the vSphere client to migrate the Edge appliance, and boom....it got migrated with no notification about mapping all the interfaces. Just select the destination ESXi host and hit "Finish", and we are done.

We were then moved into the next phase of troubleshooting but the above just put me in a dilemma that the behaviour of Web Client is a bug or is it by design.

Interested in getting the answer from VMware so that I can clarify that with the existing and future customers on why to use vSphere client and what is the alternate methods to use when the Fat/Thick client will completely got removed by VMware??

Please leave the comment and share this.

Thanks for your time.

New VMware NSX Licensing Scheme is released

Hi all,

VMware just announced the new NSX Licensing scheme so please read the FAQ here which has all the preliminary information without even getting panicked and also get in touch with your sales person (assigned to your account) which will give you the better idea.

So by looking at this the most suitable one for any small to mid size organization is the "Advanced" version which has mostly all the bells and whistles except the multi site and Cross VC functionalities.

Its a simple math when making the decisions on what the organization wants. If its ready to spend money to connect their geographically dispersed locations then Enterprise edition is the only choice.

To promote open stack the standard Edition is having the support for it. Home Lab people might have to go for the Standard Edition depending on the price of it as I'm sure it wont be affordable to choose the Advanced or Enterprise version.

IPSEC and SSL VPN  are part of Enterprise which is rising a question on just using L2VPN when normal organization have staff people who are connecting remotely using their MAC/WIN/*NIX machines. So even for that feature they need to go for Enterprise version. Hoping that this should be part of Advanced and NOT Enterprise but lets see what the future might hold.

All the remote features are part of Enterprise which is nice as if you don't need it you don't buy them.

There is no indication on pricing done as the pointer was set to contact the Sales person but even a hint should be fine on the pricing model or even if one has to use just one feature from other edition then what is the cost involved in that (rather than switching from one edition to another completely).

Home Lab people will surely need most of the features to test and try out various scenarios but not sure what will happen in that area unless the person is a vExpert, then its a different story.

This granular model looks adaptive but the pricing model will tell us more on how people feel about it. I just heard that it will be based on 1K per socket but I would not go with it unless it come from a valid source or from VMware itself. So hoping something should be publicly available which will give an idea to the large audience.

Share and care !

Thanks for your time.

Journey to the Land of Fahrenheit and Miles

Hi,

Since my journey ended up with VMware early this year, I was thinking and planning to move to US from Canada. So many friends and family members have an idea about my current location as Toronto, Canada. But today, as promised to many of you on Twitter and other social media, I will be demystifying the mystery and share my experience about the change I have experienced within last 6-8 months which is HUGE. Currently I am in North Carolina and enjoying the Weather after the cold winters of Canada. So technically its a halfway of the journey.

My journey from North to south brought the following items in our life including my family members'. As they say Change is Good so been through the following in one shot. :-)

City - New
State - New
Country - New
Community - New
People - New
Work place - New
Residential place - New
Neighbors - New
Friends and Relatives - New
Work culture - New
Colleagues - New
Policies - New
Rules - New
Government - New
Currency - New
Boss - New
Grocery Store/s - New
Measurements - New
Weather - New
Environment - New
Culture - New
Food Habits - New

Only some of my friends from school and this community are old :-) and I wish they should be there as they are. Loving them and this community with the deepest gratitude from my heart.

In April I joined a Customer of VMware as VMware Cloud Engineer and exposed to many products to work with which mainly includes vRA, vRO, vROPS, vCM, Hyperic and helped standing up their private cloud with UCS and Xtreme IO as their backend Infrastructure. it was very heavy on DevOps side so touched and learned little bit of Docker, Core OS, Github, Chef and other unknown :-) technologies such as UC4, Jenkins etc. Most of you must have seen an update about that. When it comes to a solution for Network Virtualization, the decision was made to use some other solution than VMware NSX. Now before departing VMware, NSX was the main/crucial component I was heavily involved in, so a thought of moving away from the product kept me thinking about my future and career path I chosen.

At the right moment this opportunity came in and I could not resist it in any way. It is a Global Solution Architect (Network Virtualization and Security) Role with one of the Top organization in IT security and a Security Partner of VMware in the area of DC Security - TrendMicro. Now with the goal of SDDC of VMware, and use of NSX in the whole Data Center, TM solutions are working in the following area and providing Optimized Security for VMware, Data Center Security, VDI Security, Cloud Computing, Securing the Software-Defined Data Center and Security and Operations Visibility.

In this capacity I need to architect and provide solutions to the customers which has a mix of Trend's "D" level of Security product solutions and VMware NSX as Network Virtualization in their Infrastructure. This is like a heavenly made pair when it comes to a pure security for SDDC and using the Micro-Segmentation based security. This combo protects the DC with all other possibilities such as Malware, DDoS, IPS/IDS which can be done only using enterprise level security solutions of TrendMicro. The role is based in Texas (where I will eventually move) so my journey will be complete from North to South :-).

So many people I have to thank for their support and I am really grateful to this community for their continued "unconditional" help whenever its needed.Truly amazing experience I am having every day when I spend time among this community where people are ready to help each other, however they can. This is not something you see every where and I am sure all of you will agree on this.

Hope to continue with my regular blogging but now with more on TrendMicro/VMware NSX solutions.

Cheers !!

Recommendation on Linkedin - Yes, I need it !

Hi All,

I never thought about this before to write a blog post of about requesting the community members and friends and others who are in touch with me one or the other way, to provide recommendation to me through Linkedin.  Now  a days Social media is the way to reach out to mass and seems to be very effective too.

After serving 8 years at VMware, now I am in a position where I am searching for a new challenge so at the same time feeling necessity about having Recommendation of my Work done in that duration.

If my contribution / reply / update / pointers helped you in any way or at least put you in the direction you want, then please just take few minutes to provide a Recommendation as its very valuable for me a lot. I would say it will be priceless.

As everyone knows Linkedin is the platform for all professionals to be in touch with each other and this is a most respective way in our professional world where one can find out everything about other person in this very space.

I have provided recommendations to those who needs them time to time and never thought of the need at that time but now I am in the same boat as them. Time is same for everyone and you never know when it will change. As it changed for me, I humbly request to provide the same at your earliest convenience and me and my Family are truly grateful to you for your time and help.

So please feel free to reach out to me if you need the same and I am happy to provide it as well.

This is a general stand I am taking to get the recommendation as it will take lot of time to reach out to people individually (in fact I am doing that too) but as the person might be busy or not checking his linkedin, the message may be sitting there idle. I have seen few messages like that in my inbox which I just acted and agreed that they were requested by the person/s almost a year back. Now providing the recommendation at present, may or may not help as it was not done on time (may be they need at that time) and I have provided today. So please check your inbox for such message and at least let the person know the status about it. Going forward, I will be taking care of it for sure as now realized the importance of it. As everyone has their own priorities to do things so please dont take this as any advice or such. but consider it as a general thought of a person who is in need at the moment.

If you are not in my circle then just send out the request on my way and my doors are open.

If you see any request from me about the recommendation then once again, just requesting few minutes of your busy schedule to provide it.

Community is all about help and hence this blog post.

Hope you will help and also spread the message to others.

Thanks for your time and help

Please share and care !

Wish me luck !

VCAP5-DCD cleared and now one step closer to VCDX !

Hi,

All the readers out there who has been through the journey of VCAP-DCD will know the feeling of pressing the button "End the Exam" and which gives you the one moment of shock, which runs through your whole body and every single tissue of the body is waiting for the next screen.

"Congratulations you have passed the VCAP-DCD Examination"

That screen gave me immense pleasure and for minutes,hours and now days its still giving me the same pleasure in installments :-).

Wow, what a journey. The DCD and DCA are one of the most difficult exams I have ever taken and everyone can vouch the same who has been through the journey as me.

Thank You Note

I really want to thank my friends and colleague who have helped me through this DCD Exam journey and contributed their knowledge and their invaluable time they have provided. We have formed virtual study group and exchanged ideas and prepared to tackle this challenge.


Bas Raayman - @BasRaayman

Gregg Robertson - @greggrobertson5

Marek Zdrojewski - @MarekDotZ

Bobby Stampfle - @BobbyFantast1c

Alex- Correa - @AlexCorrea305 and his friends.

Michael Webster - @vcdxnz001 is my mentor and guided me through this journey.

Exam experience:

I went to another Pearson Vue location for a change for this Exam which I gave based on version vSphere 5.1 and Bingo ! Found it lucky ! :-)

BTW this Exam is retiring today itself so no more vSphere 5.1 but going forward only 5.5 version is available at this time. So many people have asked about the same through Twitter so thought to clarify as everyone is interested in knowing the experience for 5.5 version. Hopefully someone who has passed the version 5.5 can put their experience for others.

It was a new center opened in West of Toronto and 30 mins drive was not far. and went through regular security check in process and get started. No hick ups in the Exam except on time the Adobe Flash decided to stop responding and I just waited for few seconds and it came back normally and yes this was during making a 3rd Design. I almost finished 100 questions leaving 1.25 mins to spare. So thought to take a scheduled break, 1st time I took this break as this was my 4th Attempt :-). Yes I never gave up. This is a Devil exam if you ask me. Especially the content is not what you do on daily basis so you WILL find it more challenging than others who are not in the same boat as you.

So I used that extra time and started reviewing the questions again from # 1. Made some changes in my selection of the answers too while thinking over the options I have selected in MC, and D&D type questions and actually one Design Question as well. But at the end, everything was worth to get a Pass.

"A Pass is a Pass" - as they say, but getting 317 is little more to satisfy myself as just not at the Edge.

Exam Preparation/Tips and Resources

Now for the preparation, I took long time as busy with Family, personal matters, other certification exams time to time with various tracks etc. but I gave myself a break of few months between the attempts and literally spent my own time in preparing for the same. I have seen that most people don't do that (spending vacation time) to prepare for an Exam so in that regard  I have to say a big "Thank You" to my wife and my family to support me through this journey and also in advance for the VCDX. With two little kids it IS difficult to study in breaks and give such tough exam, But my friends, hard work pays off. Period.

For the resources I have used all known resources which are available freely to everyone but will still list out here for the reference.

1) Official vsphere Design Workshop material - Student Guide and Lab Guide
[The courseware is more than enough for this Exam :-)]
2) Official blueprint to keep track of the subjects and reading
3) 2nd Edition vSphere Design book by Scott Lowe
4) Pluralsight videos by Scott Lowe on vSphere Design
5) Managing and Optimizing vSphere Deployments - by Harley Stagner and Sean Crookston
6) VMware vSphere Building a Virtual Datacenter - by Eric Maille and Rene-Francois Mennecier
7) VMware vSphere 5.x Datacenter Design Cookbook - by Hershey Cartwright
8) vSphere Design Best Practices - by Christopher Kusek and brian Bolander
9) Storage Implementation in vSphere 50 - by Mostafa Khalil
10) Gregg Robertson has listed most resources here for DCD so check them out.

10) There is a visio like tool used in the DCD Exam to draw the design and I found the link on Josh andrews' blog  which led me to http://virtualtiers.net/ developed by the community members. I used that to practise the Design questions listed on the site and also tried creating few fictitious designs on my own and use the tool to create a design. This way you can get familiarize with the tool and the time can be minimized for placements of objects in the Exam.

Though this tool is experimental as still undergoing some improvements but its not bad at all. I really recommend to the future candidates who are preparing for 5.5 version to practice the Design items.

11) Some ex-TSEs of VMware has developed a nice Study Guide for VCAP-DCD at http://virtuallyhyper.com so dont forget to check that out. It is very intensive and well written guide covering all the blueprint subjects. You will find some other study guides links as well there.

12) No doubt apart from the reading material you should have experience working in Virtualization architecting and developing solutions and also understanding the terms and technologies to be used.

As the exam is retiring today I wish the good luck to all who are on this path to VCDX for their DCD on 55 version. Once the version 6 will be out it may change as well but time will tell the availability for 5.5 version for now.

Please share and care !!

Wish me Luck for VCDX !

End of Era.... Waiting for new Beginning !

Hi,

This is very unexpected and unfortunate but I received this news today that due to Organizational restructuring my position at VMware got eliminated so now I am open to any position within the SDDC, NSX, cloud computing or any other suitable position if you or someone in your circle knows about it.

Its been solid 8 years at VMware and saw the whole organization very closely including its growth, products, vision etc. etc.

I started in the days of ESXi 2.x onwards and now 6 is almost on the door step this year.

During my journey here I took some challenges apart from my normal routines and got awarded externally with vExpert (2014/2015) and Cisco Champion 2015 recently. so far I am the only TSE in GSS of VMware who is Cisco Champion so that is a proud moment.

Recently also received an award for Super KM Hero for the year 2014 by the Knowledge Management Team of VMware which is given to an individual who has the highest contribution to the Internal/ External KB articles and White Papers/official documentation by providing positive constructive Feedback/s.

Created around 130+ articles in the repository of the articles and got numerous awards over the years too for the efforts I have put it in.

Anyway my Linkedin Profile has all the details but please get in touch with me if you have any position for me and if you know someone who has such opening in the above areas where I can use my knowledge and experience and I am sure I won't let the selection down.

You can also reach me through Twitter (DM) if you are following me.

I am really thankful for your support and hoping to get some gig soon as I am open to any location in US as decided to move from Canada. I can provide more details if you need once we start having conversation.

This is very hard to digest but C'est la vie !!

If you are on my Linked contacts then please feel free to provide recommendation at your convenient time. Also any references you can provide is appreciated (personally/professionally).

When one door closes, another one opens. This is what I strongly believe and now just waiting for the right moment.

Not feeling anything negatively but staying strong and hoping things changes soon.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you need any more information through email, Linkedin or Twitter or using this blog. 

VCIX - NV Resources, Tips and Exam Experience

Hi,

Recently I had some days off at the end of the year and thought to use them properly so I booked the VCIX-NV and VCP-NV (yes in that order only :-)).

First of all, I will list out the resources which I used to prepare for VCIX-NV.

The Exam is based on NSX for vSphere version 6.0.2.

1) Blueprint for the VCIX-NV (Yes this is the Primary)

2) HOL Labs 1403,1424,1425 (Enrol few times and make sure you understand all the Tasks you are performing)

3) Official NSX for vSphere Documentation (The Documentation is based on NSX-V 6.1 version)

Read the Installation Guide and Admin Guide very carefully. Understand the overall objective for using particular NSX Feature/s.

4) VCIX Study Guide Series posts by Martijin Smit

5) There is a VMware blogs which you can find here.

6) Hands on. (which I didn't except the HOL as dont have the HomeLab). This is a key as you can test all kinds of scenarios possible as per the blueprint. I understand not everyone has ability and can afford the HomeLab [ like me :-( ] has to rely on alternate resources like HOL. Second problem could be the NSX bits which is again not possible to get for everyone who is trying to achieve this certification.

Now lets come at the 2nd part of the post which is about the Exam Experience at Pearson Vue.

Now as most of the people know in the community and this has be brought out earlier too by various people in the form of various blog posts which is related to the Latency issue while doing the live lab at Pearson Vue Testing center and I had similar issue few times. I called up the proctor three times where either I had the issue when the task was not finishing up after clicking OK button in the vSphere Web Client and waiting till its finished which took long time but cant do anything else until that task is over. One time I cant even click OK on the menu and then Proctor called up the Tech Support and as I watching and listening the whole conversation, no troubleshooting steps actually been performed and automatically everything came to normal. The proctor did freeze the session each time but I got only 15 mins for all the time loss which to me is not enough as I think I wasted almost 25-30 mins just in waiting. I have already addressed this internally and hopefully it will be fixed in near future.

Few Tips for the future candidates.

a) Try to setup the putty sessions to all the possible components which you need for either verifying configuration or part of troubleshooting

b) Use vSphere C# client to make changes in the configuration which I find is faster than Web Client.

c) Read the task carefully and make sure you finish all of them and using both vSphere c# and Web client together will minimize the overall time.

d) Write down the passwords and other information about the login credentials on the sheet Pearson is providing as you may need them

e) Not sure how to keep track but do mark the questions answered fully or partially on the sheet so that you can go back and check if anything needs to be finished later on.

f) Dont spend too much time on one task and now this is the advice everyone is giving whomsoever took the VCAP exams but it DOES makes difference here in VCIX as there are only 18 tasks to finish within the same amount of Time as other VCAP Exams.


Clarification on VCP-NV inheritance on passing VCIX-NV:

So many people in the community are under the impression that once anyone clears the VCIX-NV exam will automatically inherit VCP-NV which is not true as per the response I have received and it is clear in the course datasheet and other details available right now.

VCIX is not similar in that sense as VCAP. If someone passes any VCAP level exam then it is possible to inherit the VCP certification upon passing VCAP but with VCIX, it is not the case.

Logically thinking, why the person has to appear if he is capable of passing VCIX? Which to me is a valid question but still awaiting a reply on that Internally. I will update this post once I receive a response from VMware Education Services.

So I did have to admit that I postpone my success till next attempt of VCIX-NV :-)

As VCP-NV was out of the way on the very next day of VCIX attempt, hopefully I should be able to knock it down next time as not blaming anything I will have to just focus on the missed areas and also deep dive again in NSX !!

Wish me luck !

Share and care please !

How to do Partial / Full Uninstall of NSX Manager / Components

Hi,

Recently I got a question where the POC was running and then Lab Environment needs to be reset with some of the NSX component for one Cluster out of Two.

So basically we have to get rid of the configuration from 3 ESXi hosts which are part of one cluster and there are other hosts in the 2nd cluster which needs to be continue running using NSX Manager without any issue.

Now the procedure we follow is exactly the same when you have to do the Partial uninstall or Full,

You just have to make sure that you follow the steps for all the ESXi host which are part of the cluster.

1. Reversing Host Prep

You need to connect to vCenter web client and then from there you need to unprep the host and also make sure that NSX manager is still up and connected to vCenter Server.

Remove EAM Agency:

- Go to vCenter à Home à Administration  à vCenter Solutions Manager à vSphere ESX Agent Manager

- Under the management tab, Click X (under Actions) to delete the solution (Agency).

- You can go under Networking and Security menu- Installation Tab and verify that the cluster is removed (if its a partial uninstall out of multi cluster environment)

Alternatively you can remove the installed VIBs from each host which was prepared for VXLAN

# esxcli software vib remove --vibname=esx-dvfilter-switch-security

# esxcli software vib remove --vibname=esx-vsip

# esxcli software vib remove --vibname=esx-vxlan

And Reboot the ESXi host/s to make the changes in effect.

Sometimes if there is any issue then you can find the Agency using the vCenter MOB. I will list out the Screen shots here in another post as its a long procedure.

In Summary check the EAM mob at https://vcenter/eam/mob/ (note the trailing /). Look for the agency that correlates to the cluster that is attempting to be uninstalled for any errors or reasons it may get stuck at "Uninstalling" under the Installation Tab of Networking and Security Menu of vCenter Server Web Client.

You can try to manually delete the agency if you're sure that all uninstall steps mentioned above have been performed on the hosts.

Sometimes restart of Web client Service will clear up the Uninstalling status.

Then we have to make sure that other components which are not required (only in case of full Uninstall) then we need to take care of them as well.

1) Turn Off Firewall on the components (if any configured)

2) Delete edge appliances (if any) & NSX Manager/Controllers etc.

3) Remove dvPortGroups used for VTEPs, Logical switch port groups and left over VTEP vmkernel interfaces.

4) Reboot the ESXi host/s

2. vCenter Extension removal

- Remove the NSX extension (vShield Extension) using vCenter MOB

- Go to https://vcenter-ip/mob

- Select Content à then select ExtensionManager à

Click on the method “Unregister Extension” and enter the extension string; com.vmware.vShieldManager

3. Clean up/ Remove vSphere Web Client Files for NSX

a) For Windows Based vCenter Server

Delete the directory(s) com.vmware.vShieldManager.** from C:\Program Data\VMware\vSphere Web Client\vc-packages\vsphere-client-serenity\

Restart the vSphere Web Client service from Administrator Tools (or Run services.msc) Services  à vSphere Web Client

b) If you are running VCVA linux appliance

Delete the directory(s) com.vmware.vShieldManager.** from /var/lib/vmware/vsphere-client/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity/

Restart vsphere-web-client by issuing `service vsphere-client restart`

4.) Deleting the NSX Manager Appliance (only in case of full Uninstall)

If you are doing the Full Uninstall then, after shutting down the NSX Manager appliance, you can right click and select "Delete from Disk"

I am in process of getting a KB published too so will update the post once it’s done.

Hope you find this information useful.

Share and Care please.

Thanks for reading.

Setting up Syslog on NSX Controller

Hi

Recently I received a request on how to configure syslog on the NSX controller during the NSX training so I looked at the API documentation and found out that this is the only supported Way to configure the syslog for NSX controllers. Official documentation will get modified reflecting the same state but in the mean time please read this post and refer the KB mentioned below.

Enabling or querying or disabling Syslog On NSX controller using NSX API

Add controller syslog exporter
Configures a syslog exporter on the specified controller node.

Request
POST https:///api/2.0/vdn/controller/{controller-id}/syslog
Request Body:

10.135.14.236
514
UDP
INFO

Query controller syslog exporter
Retrieves details about the configured syslog exporter on the specified controller node.

Request
GET https:///api/2.0/vdn/controller/{controller-id}/syslog
Response Body:

10.135.14.236
514
UDP
INFO

Delete controller syslog exporter
Deletes syslog exporter on the specified controller node.

Request
DELETE https:///api/2.0/vdn/controller/{controller-id}/syslog

Now only thing you need to make sure that you need to use the encoding method as application/xml NOT application/json.

Here is the screen shot from the NSX API Guide about using xml format.

Hope you find this useful and based on the above information I have created a KB article also which you can refer to setup syslog for NSX Manager too.

Enjoy !! 

Share and care !

NSX Certification - All Tracks Available Now

Hi,

With recent announcement today by VMware Education about the VCIX-NX track for VMware NSX all the tracks are now available to become VCDX-NV for VMware VMware NSX/Network Virtualization.

You can request the authorization for the VCIX-NX on the certification page.

All other details are there as well.

VCP-NV related details are here.

VCDX-NX related details you can find here.

Blueprint for VCIX-NV

VCIX-NV recommend courses 

VMware NSX for Internetworking Experts Fast Track [V6.0]

VMware NSX Install, Configure, Manage

VMware VCIX Course Datasheet

There is an advantage for having valid CCIE Data Center or CCIE Routing & Switching certification and you can verify that here.

So now go get them. Good Luck !

Share and Care please !

VMware NSX based VCP-NV - Lets hits it !!

Hi,

Recently VMware has released the Certifications based on VMware Network Virtualization

1) VCP-NV

2) VCDX-NV

Now any one can download the Blueprint for VCP-NV from the site and it covers mainly the following topics.


Section 1 – Define VMware NSX Technology and Architecture

Objective 1.1 – Describe the Benefits of a VMware NSX Implementation
Objective 1.2 – Describe VMware NSX Architecture
Objective 1.3 – Differentiate VMware Network and Security Technologies
Objective 1.4 – Contrast Physical and Virtual Network Technologies
Objective 1.5 –Explain VMware NSX Integration with Third-Party Products and Services


Section 2 – Plan and Configure vSphere Networking

Objective 2.1 – Define Benefits of Running VMware NSX on Physical Network Fabrics
Objective 2.2 – Describe Physical Infrastructure Requirements for a VMware NSX Implementation


Section 3 – Configure and Manage vSphere Networking

Objective 3.1 – Configure and Manage vSphere Standard Switches (vSS)
Objective 3.2 – Configure and Manage vSphere Distributed Switches (vDS)
Objective 3.3 – Configure and Manage vSS and vDS Policies


Section 4 – Install and Upgrade VMware NSX

Objective 4.1 – Configure Environment for Network Virtualization
Objective 4.2 – Deploy VMware NSX Components
Objective 4.3 – Upgrade Existing vCNS/NSX Implementation
Objective 4.4 – Expand Transport Zone to Include New Cluster(s)


Section 5 – Configure VMware NSX Virtual Networks

Objective 5.1 – Create and Administer Logical Switches
Objective 5.2 – Configure VXLAN
Objective 5.3 – Configure and
Objective 5.4 – Configure and Manage Logical Routers Manage Layer 2 Bridging


Section 6 – Configure and Manage NSX Network Services

Objective 6.1 – Configure and Manage Logical Load Balancing
Objective 6.2 – Configure and Manage Logical Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
Objective 6.3 – Configure and Manage DHCP/DNS/NAT
Objective 6.4 – Configure and Manage Edge Services High Availability


Section 7 – Configure and Administer Network Security

Objective 7.1 – Configure and Administer Logical Firewall Services
Objective 7.2 – Configure Distributed Firewall Services
Objective 7.3 – Configure and Manage Service Composer


Section 8 – Perform Operations Tasks in a VMware NSX Environment

Objective 8.1 – Configure Roles, Permissions, and Scopes
Objective 8.2 – Describe NSX Automation
Objective 8.3 – Monitor a VMware NSX Implementation
Objective 8.4 – Perform Auditing and Compliance
Objective 8.5 – Administer Logging
Objective 8.6 – Backup and Recover Configurations


Section 9 – Troubleshoot a VMware Network Virtualization Implementation

Objective 9.1 – Identify Tools Available for Troubleshooting
Objective 9.2 – Troubleshoot Common NSX Installation/Configuration Issues
Objective 9.3 – Troubleshoot Common NSX Component Issues
Objective 9.4 – Troubleshoot Common Connectivity Issues
Objective 9.5 – Troubleshoot Common vSphere Networking Issues


For those who wants to know how the exam looks like than have a look at the practice exam released by VMware Education and also by @pmcsharry which you can find here.

I will try to cover each objective separately and if possible I can also present it on vBrownBag (if time and resource permits as don't have Lab for NSX) but till then lets just get started here with the study.

Mainly the documents referred for covering the objectives are all released by VMware and the information can be formed under the Whitepapers mentioned in the Blueprint.

I have updated my NSX Resource post today as well so take a look at it here to study more about NSX. All the documents/Whitepapers can be found here.

If you feel if I missed anything while covering the objectives then please leave a comment to get in touch with me an I can update the post at the earliest with your feedback.

Enjoy reading and wish you good luck towards your journey of VCDX-NV :-) !!

Share and care !!

VMware NSX Resources

Hello,

As NSX and VSAN are the future and now everyone is looking for the resources on both these products.

Duncan Epping has listed all the resources of VSAN on his website which gave me an idea to do the same for NSX (VMware's Network Virtualization).


Learning / WhitePapers :

VMware NSX Walkthrough 

VMware NSX Resources Page

VMware NSX Network Virtualization Design Guide

VMware Network Virtualization Fundamentals (3 hours Self-paced Course)

Customer Use Case by NTT

VMware NSX Network Virtualization Platform

VMware NSX on Cisco Nexus 7K and UCS Design Guide 

Combining VMware NSX with Palo Alto Networks

NSX vSphere Design Guide ver 2.1

NSX Multi Hypervisor Network Virtualization Design Guide Ver 4.2

Getting Started Guide for NSX vSphere 

Securing NSX vSphere Ver. 1.0

Getting Started with Micro-Segmentation with NSX vSphere


SDDC operations and solutions

EMC Smarts, RiverBed, Brocade, Tufin, Gigamon

Official Documentation : http://pubs.vmware.com/NSX-6/index.jsp


Labs :

HOL-SDC-1303 VMware NSX Network Virtualization Platform
HOL-SDC-1319 Tech Preview : VMware NSX for Multi-Hypervisor Environments



Videos/Podcast :

By Hany Michael


Deploying the NSX Virtual Appliance
Deploying the NSX Controllers
Preparing Hosts and Configuring Unicast VXLAN
Configuring a Logical Switch


By VMware NSX TV on Youtube

VMware NSX - Operational Visibility Across Virtual and Physical Domains
Network Automation with NSX
Service Composer
Activity Monitoring
Verify EPIC Access
Block Finance to EPIC
User Access to Apps
VM Activity
VM Level Activity

Videos by NSX Partners

NSX Demo Video

Youtube NSX channel

At VMworld 2013

Under the Hood Network Virtualization with OpenStack
Session NET5847 Introducing to NSX
Network Virtualization : Moving Beyond  the Obvious
Interview with Bruce Davie at VMworld about NSX
Nicira for Open, Flexible and Virtualized Networking
Interview with Martin Casado
General Session Annoucement at VMworld Barcelona


VMworld 2012

NET 5520 - VMware NSX Integration with OpenStack

By Brad Hedlund

Video Interview at VMworld about NSX
Virtualization Security Round Table : VMware NSX
VMware's approach to SDN from Brad Hedlund

By IpSpace (Ivan Pepelnjak)
NSX Architecture Videos

VMUG NSX series


VMworld 2014 Session for NSX and SDDC

http://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2014/08/vmworld-2014-networking-security-session-guide.html

VMworld Session for NSX

NSX Training Video by Jason Nash on Pluralsight


Certifications :

VMware Certification Road Map on VCA-NV, VCP-NV, VCIx-NV and VCDX-NV (Sign up if Interested in VCIX-NV)

Linkedin Group for VMware NV Certifications

VCP-NV Certfication

NSX Fast Track for Internetworking Experts - VCIX-NV (Now Available)

VCDX-NV Certification

NSX: Design & Deploy (sign up Available)

NSX Troubleshooting Workshop (sign up Available)

Diagrams :


By Hany Michael :

VMware NSX for vSphere - Systems Architecture

VMware NSX with vCloud Director - External Portal Access
VMware NSX with vCloud Director - Remote VPN Access

By Greg Ferro

NSX - Before and After Traffic Diagrams

By Anthony Burke :

VMware NSX for vSphere Architecture v0.2

By Ivan Pepelnjak :

NSX Architecture



Other blogs and Presentations :

By VMware : 

VMware NSX

NSX Availability 

VMware Communities for NSX

Google + community for NSX

By Brad Hedlund :

NSX Convergence and Reforming operational visibility for the SDDC
Seven Reasons VMware NSX, Cisco UCS adn Nexus are more awesome together
NSX Distributed Firewall

By Scott Lowe :

Handling the NVP to NSX Transition

By Anthony Burke :
VMware NSX is here and Now

By Erik Scholten :
Introduction to VMware NSX
VMware NSX Distributed Services

By Techtarget

By CRN

By Network Computing

By Forbes

By Moor Insights & Strategy

By Virtualized Geek

By Greg Ferro

By SDN Central

By Virtualization Practice

By The Register-co-uk

By Network Computing

By Packetpushers : Real World SDN

By Ivan Pepelnjak: NSX Architecture

VMware NSX Defining the Problem

Why is Network Virtualization so Hard?



Sales:
Contact


Support :

By Nicira : Support Page


NSX Training
http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=48389&ui=www_edu

NSX ICM 6.0 course for 5 Days

Social Groups / Community

Linked Group created by yours Truly

Google Plus Community by Angelo Luciani


I will try to keep this page updated as and when receives any feedback or RSS Feeds but you can always leaves the Feedback and I will try to update the post at the earliest.

Share and care as NSX is the Future of Virtualized Networking.

Thanks