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Deploying NSX-T VIBs and/or creating custom NSX-T Image Profile

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Similiar to its earlier predecessor, NSX-T also provides complete lifecycle management (LCM) of its underlying NSX components (Controllers, Edges and Managers) including the Fabric Nodes (e.g. ESXi and/or KVM hosts). Additionally, a new Upgrade Coordinator is now part of NSX-T which greatly simplifies the patching and updating of the network virtualization platform. However, for existing vSphere customers who already have a process for distributing VMware VIBs using vSphere Update Manager (VUM) and/or custom Image Profiles, being able to leverage their existing methods is quite important. This is especially true for customers or system integrators who wish to slipstream all necessary VIBs as part of their base ESXi image for initial deployment which may come in the form of an automated installation via Kickstart and/or even manual install using an ISO image.

The good news is that like NSX-V, NSX-T also supports the same set of deployment methods that customers are already familiar with. I had recently looked into this due to a few questions that I and a few other folks had during our NSX-T Bootcamp training a couple of weeks back. I also did not see anything in the existing NSX-T documentation and figure it would be useful to outline the specific steps for each of the installation methods, especially when creating a custom ESXi Image Profile using PowerCLI which requires a particular order.

Note: Auto Deploy is currently not supported with NSX-T.

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VMware Tools 10.2.0 enables Virtual Machine vNIC exclusion and priority re-ordering

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VMware Tools 10.2.0 just GA'ed (release notes / download and open-vm-tools release notes / open-vm-tools download) and this release includes a number of new features like an offline bundle for VMware Tools VIB for ESXi and support for deploying VMware Tools using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to just name a few. There are also two additional new capabilities that I wanted to share as I think customers can benefit from and take advantage of immediately around how Virtual Machine vNICs are displayed. One of the challenges with having the broadest Guest Operating System (GOS) support in vSphere is dealing with some of the different behaviors of each GOS. One such example are the various ways in how both physical and logical networks interfaces are enumerated by an OS.

Take the example below, I have a PhotonOS VM which has eth0 as the primary interface and it is configured with an IP Address of 192.168.30.101. However, as you can see from the screenshot below I am actually getting back a different address and interface. In addition to this, we also see other logical interfaces showing up in the IP Address list such as Docker interfaces as well as virtual and other pseudo interfaces that may or may not be useful to VI Admins.


Historically, there was not a way to control what would show up in the network interface list which is then propagated from VMware Tools up to both the vSphere API as well as vSphere UI. With this new release of VMware Tools, which can be applied asynchronously to a given vSphere release, customers now have the ability to filter on a per-VM basis on what interfaces actually show up as well as a relative priority for interfaces that customers care more about.

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Getting started with Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) on VMware Cloud on AWS

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I had been hearing a lot of cool things about VMware's Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) but never tried the solution myself nor had a good understanding of what it actually provided. With the recently announced Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMWonAWS) offering being available, I thought this was a great way to get hands on with HCX and take advantage of my VMWonAWS infrastructure. Having only spent a couple of days with the solution, I can see why customers are excited for HCX and the new offering on VMWonAWS makes it super easy to consume. I also recently learned that HCX is now free for all VMWonAWS customers and you can easily live migrated your VMs to/from your onPrem environment!

There are a number of impressive capabilities that HCX offers, but two that really stood out to me which I thought was quite unique and interesting compared to other VM-based "migration" options. The first is that HCX can perform live VM migrations (vMotion) or replicated migrations (vSphere Replication) which includes scheduled switch over across different versions of vSphere (vSphere 5.x to/from vSphere 6.x). This is great for customers who may not be able to upgrade their underlying vSphere environment to 6.0 or later and take advantage of things like Cross vCenter vMotion feature which only supports VM migration between vSphere 6.0u3 to/from 6.x.

The second capability is that HCX can abstract and protect the underlying ESXi hosts by not requiring direct connectivity between the source and destination ESXi hosts. Traditionally, for vMotion and vSphere Replication traffic, you either had to stretch the VLAN or ensure the VMkernel interface was routable so that it can communicate with the destination ESXi hosts for data transfers. This was not always possible and adds additional networking requirements which can be challenging to implement depending on how your network infrastructure is configured. The way HCX solves this problem is by using a special HCX Cloud Gateway which securely proxy vMotion and vSphere Replication traffic from the on-premises environment out to the respective HCX Cloud Gateway Peer which then gets transfered to destination vSphere environment. Below is a diagram to help illustrate this:


Note: HCX also supports WAN optimization (compression and de-duplication) out of the box, which the diagram includes as that is what I had deployed in my env. This is an optional virtual appliance that can be deployed at each location ensuring efficient data transfer between the source and destination vSphere environments.

While going through and getting HCX configured on both my VMWonAWS and onPrem environment, I had ran into a few minor gotchas and to help others avoid some of the issues I had ran into, I figure I would outline the process and include some additional tips that can be help.

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