VMware NSX-T Data Center: Design [V3.2]

This five-day course provides comprehensive training on considerations and practices to design a VMware NSX-T™ Data Center environment as part of a software-defined data center strategy. This course prepares the student with the skills to lead the design of NSX-T Data Center offered in release 3.2, including design principles, processes, and frameworks. The student gains a deeper understanding of the NSX-T Data Center architecture and how it can be used to create solutions to address the customer’s business needs.

Objectives:

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Describe and apply a design framework
• Apply a design process for gathering requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks
• Design a VMware vSphere® virtual data center to support NSX-T Data Center requirements
• Create a VMware NSX® Manager™ cluster design
• Create a VMware NSX® Edge™ cluster design to support traffic and service requirements in NSX-T Data Center
• Design logical switching and routing
• Recognize NSX-T Data Center security best practices
• Design logical network services
• Design a physical network to support network virtualization in a software-defined data center
• Create a design to support the NSX-T Data Center infrastructure across multiple sites
• Describe the factors that drive performance in NSX-T Data Center

Intended Audience:

Network and security architects and consultants who design the enterprise and data center networks and VMware NSX® environments

Prerequisites:

Before taking this course, you must complete the following course:

• VMware NSX-T Data Center: Install, Configure, Manage [V3.2]

 You should also have the understanding or knowledge of these technologies:

• Good understanding of TCP/IP services and protocols
• Knowledge and working experience of computer networking and security, including:
  • Switching and routing technologies (L2-L3)
  • Network and application delivery services (L4-L7)
  • Firewalling (L4-L7)
  • vSphere environments

 The VMware Certified Professional – Network Virtualization certification is recommended.

Product Alignment

• VMware NSX-T Data Center 3.2

Course Outline:

1 Course Introduction

• Introduction and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 NSX Design Concepts

• Identify design terms
• Describe framework and project methodology
• Describe VMware Validated Design™
• Identify customers’ requirements, assumptions, constraints, and risks
• Explain the conceptual design
• Explain the logical design
• Explain the physical design

3 NSX Architecture and Components

• Recognize the main elements in the NSX-T Data Center architecture
• Describe the NSX management cluster and the management plane
• Identify the functions and components of management, control, and data planes
• Describe the NSX Manager sizing options
• Recognize the justification and implication of NSX manager cluster design decisions
• Identify the NSX management cluster design options

4 NSX Edge Design

• Explain the leading practices for edge design
• Describe the NSX Edge VM reference designs
• Describe the bare-metal NSX Edge reference designs
• Explain the leading practices for edge cluster design
• Explain the effect of stateful services placement
• Explain the growth patterns for edge clusters
• Identify design considerations when using L2 bridging services

5 NSX Logical Switching Design

• Describe concepts and terminology in logical switching
• Identify segment and transport zone design considerations
• Identify virtual switch design considerations
• Identify uplink profile, VMware vSphere® Network I/O Control profile, and transport node profile design considerations
• Identify Geneve tunneling design considerations
• Identify BUM replication mode design considerations

6 NSX Logical Routing Design

• Explain the function and features of logical routing
• Describe NSX-T Data Center single-tier and multitier routing architectures
• Identify guidelines when selecting a routing topology
• Describe the BGP and OSPF routing protocol configuration options
• Explain gateway high availability modes of operation and failure detection mechanisms
• Identify how multitier architectures provide control over stateful service location
• Identify VRF Lite requirements and considerations
• Identify the typical NSX scalable architectures

7 NSX Security Design

• Identify different security features available in NSX-T Data Center
• Describe the advantages of an NSX Distributed Firewall
• Describe the use of NSX Gateway Firewall as a perimeter firewall and as an intertenant firewall
• Determine a security policy methodology
• Recognize the NSX-T Data Center security best practices

8 NSX Network Services

• Identify the stateful services available in different edge cluster high availability modes
• Describe failover detection mechanisms
• Explain the design considerations for integrating VMware NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ with NSX-T Data Center
• Describe stateful and stateless NSX-T Data Center NAT
• Identify benefits of NSX-T Data Center DHCP
• Identify benefits of metadata proxy
• Describe IPSec VPN and L2 VPN

9 Physical Infrastructure Design

• Identify the components of a switch fabric design
• Assess Layer 2 and Layer 3 switch fabric design implications
• Review guidelines when designing top-of-rack switches
• Review options for connecting transport hosts to the switch fabric
• Describe typical designs for VMware ESXi™ compute hypervisors with two pNICs
• Describe typical designs for ESXi compute hypervisors with four or more pNICs
• Describe a typical design for a KVM compute hypervisor with two pNICs
• Differentiate dedicated and collapsed cluster approaches to SDDC design

10 NSX Multilocation Design

• Explain scale considerations in an NSX-T Data Center multisite design
• Describe the main components of the NSX Federation architecture
• Describe the stretched networking capability in Federation
• Describe stretched security use cases in Federation
• Compare Federation disaster recovery designs

11 NSX Optimization

• Describe Geneve Offload
• Describe the benefits of Receive Side Scaling and Geneve Rx Filters
• Explain the benefits of SSL Offload
• Describe the effect of Multi-TEP, MTU size, and NIC speed on throughput
• Explain the available N-VDS enhanced datapath modes and use cases
• List the key performance factors for compute nodes and NSX Edge nodes