VMware NSX for vSphere 6.1 Step-By-Step Installation

I know your excited to get right down to the meat of the installtion, but there is some housekeeping that we need to get out of the way first.  There are a number of pre-requisites that we need to ensure exist in the environment first.

Pre-requisites

1. A properly configured vCenter Server with at least one cluster. (Ideally (2) clusters – (1) Management Cluster & 1(1) Cluster for everything else.)
2. Cluster should have at least (2) hosts. (More would be better.  Memory will be important)
3. You will need to be using Distributed Virtual Switches (DvSwitch) NOT Standard vSwitches.
4. If you are NOT running vSphere 5.5 you will need to have your physical switches configured for Multicast. (Unicast requires vSphere 5.5)
5. You will need a vLAN on your physical network that you can utilize for VXLAN.

To give you an idea below is the configuration for the “MoaC” lab that I will be working in.

MoaC Configuration

• vCenter 5.5 U2b
• (3) Clusters
  • Management Cluster with (2) vSphere  ESXi 5.5 U2 Hosts
    • 32GB Memory
    • Cluster only DvSwitch using NIC Teaming
  • Services Cluster with (4) vSphere ESXi 5.5 U2 Hosts
    • 196GB Memory
    • Cluster only DvSwitch using LAG.
  • Desktop Cluster with (2) vSphere ESXi 5.5 U2 Hosts
    • 112GB Memory
    • Cluster only DvSwitch using LAG.
• Physical vLAN trunked to all vSphere hosts in all clusters.

[Ream More]