Tag: Design

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VMware NSX Network Design Example

In my previous post about the VMware NSX Edge Routing, I explained how the Edge Service Gateways are connected to the physical network.

Now I want to show an example how the network design could look like if you want to use NSX:

Of course this really depends on your requirements and how complex your network is, I could easily replace the Tenant Edge Service Gateways (ESG) with Distributed Logical Router (DLR) if your tenant network is more complex. The advantage with the ESGs is that I could easily enable Load Balancing as a Service to balance traffic between servers in my tier-3 networks.

The ESGs using Load Balancing as a Services can we as well deploy on-a-stick but for this you need to use SNAT and X-Forwarded-For:

Very interesting it gets when you start using the Distributed Firewall and filter traffic between servers in the same network, micro-segmentation of your virtual machines within the same subnet. In combination with Security Tags this can be a very powerful way of securing your networks.

About what VMware NSX can do, I can only recommend reading the VMware NSX reference design guide, you find lot of useful information how to configure NSX.

Comment below if you have questions.

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Cumulus Networks (Open Networking)

In my recent data centre network redesign project I used Cumulus Linux on Open Networking switches from Dell (S3048-ON and S4048-ON). I heard from Cumulus Networks around 2 1/2 years ago and did some testing with the VX appliance back then but I was waiting for the official release of the VRF feature. Ones I got the go ahead for the data centre redesign project, it was clear to replace Cisco and use Cumulus Linux on the all the data centre switches.

I was one of the first Cumulus users of finding a bug with VRF in Quagga because of extensive use of VRFs:

RN-518 (CM-13328) - Quagga sometimes installs a duplicate static route

After a Cumulus Linux switch with VRF routes installed was 
rebooted, the VRF routes were present in the kernel but 
not installed into hardware. Restarting Quagga resolved 
the issue.

This issue has been fixed in the update 
to the 3.1.2 repository.

Like in my latest post the idea was to use a converged network stack which needed some more advanced configuration on the switch itself with different VRFs to split the data centre into Corporate (office) and Production.

So far I have a very good experience with Cumulus Networks, the support is awesome and very skilled!