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Automating the creation of NSX-T "Disconnected" Segments for DR testing on VMware Cloud on AWS 

03.05.2020 by William Lam // 1 Comment

Disaster Recovery (DR) and Disaster Avoidance (DA) on VMware Cloud on AWS is still one of the most popular use case amongst our customers, just second to Datacenter Migration and Evacuation. The VMware Site Recovery service makes it extremely easy and cost effective for customers to protect their critical workloads without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Most often, the biggest cost of having a dedicated DR site is the on-going operational and maintenance cost of that infrastructure.

Most recently I have seen several requests come in where customers were looking to streamline their DR testing which is fantastic to hear. Just having a DR solution is not enough, you actually need to exercise it and verify that your workloads and applications are functioning as expected. Today, customers can verify that their applications are functioning as expected by creating NSX-T network segments that are "Disconnected" and then using a VM-based router to provide internal connectivity between these isolated environments.

Here is a screenshot of the VMware Cloud console and under the Networking & Security tab, when creating a new segment you can specify whether the segment is "Connected" (Routed) or "Disconnected".


Obviously, the NSX-T UI is just one way of creating a segment. In fact, most customers that have asked about this is wanting to do this via Automation which not only brings speed to testing but also consistency! With that, I have updated my NSX-T PowerShell Community Module for VMC to include two new updates. If you have never used this VMC module before, please take a look at the Getting Started guide here.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, NSX, PowerCLI, VMware Cloud on AWS Tags // NSX-T, VMware Cloud on AWS

Configure NSX-T Enhanced Data path / Network Stack (ENS) for Nested ESXi

12.10.2019 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

After publishing my Running Nested ESXi, NSX-V or NSX-T on top of NSX-T article which actually turned out to be quite popular, I received an interesting question on whether ENS for NSX-T could also be configured within a Nested ESXi deployment? I was a little familiar with ENS, which I will explain in a second. However, I was not completely sure about the benefits of running ENS in a Nested environment.

With the help from my friend Frank Escaros-Buechsel, who actually works in our NFV group at VMware. Frank helped validate the instructions but he also provided some additional insights on why this could be useful in a lab setup for verifying configuration and behaviors when additional tuning maybe required. If you are NOT running NFV-based workloads, ENS is not something you need to configure when running NSX-T using Nested ESXi.

So what is ENS?  Enhanced Network Stack (ENS) also referred to as Enhanced Data Path is an NSX-T capability which was first introduced with NSX-T 2.3. ENS is specifically designed for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) workloads that require a high performance data path. Such workloads include Telco, 5G and IoT based deployments where improved packet throughput is critical for the responsiveness of these applications.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, Nested Virtualization, NSX, PowerCLI Tags // Enhanced Data Path, Enhanced Network Stack, ENS, nested virtualization, Network Function Virtualization, NFV, NSX-T

Running Nested ESXi, NSX-V or NSX-T on top of NSX-T

11.22.2019 by William Lam // 6 Comments

Nested Virtualization is an extremely useful tool that helps customers easily test and try out new VMware products and solutions before rolling that into a proper development environment for further validation. This is especially handy for those wanting to setup an NSX-based environment and simulating their actual deployment topology, configuration and upgrade workflows.

In this past year, I have seen a 10x increase in the number of NSX-T based questions that have come up from customers and our field, the adoption of NSX-T is definitely in full swing. As expected, questions about running Nested ESXi on top of a physical NSX-T deployment has come up and there has actually been several variations that have been asked about whether that is Nested ESXi using VSS, VDS, NSX-V or even NSX-T running on top of an N-VDS, which is the virtual switch that NSX-T uses.

Luckily all of these combinations work and just require some basic configuration changes within NSX-T. However, before I continue, let me remind folks again that VMware does NOT officially support Nested Virtualization.

[Read more...]

Categories // Home Lab, Nested Virtualization, NSX Tags // Nested ESXi, nested virtualization, nested_nsx, NSX-T, NSX-V

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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Recent

  • VMware Flings is now available in Free Downloads of Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) 05/19/2025
  • VMUG Connect 2025 - Minimal VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.x in a Box  05/15/2025
  • Programmatically accessing the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG) 05/06/2025
  • Quick Tip - Validating Broadcom Download Token  05/01/2025
  • Supported chipsets for the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi Fling 04/23/2025

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