VMware announces VMware NSX-T Data Center 2.2.0

James 9th June 2018 NSX 0

With the recent announcement of VMware’s NSX-T Data Center 2.2.0, here is a summary of the key updates that you should be aware of, not least of which is the ability to manage Microsoft Azure based workloads and increased networking and security capabilities for on prem and VMware Cloud on AWS, as part of the NSX Cloud product! For the full list of new features please read the release notes. As always, I am an advocate of trying the latest products and features, so recommend you take some time to try the Hands on Labs for getting started with NSX-T.

VMware NSX-T Data Center is the next generation product that provides a scalable network virtualization and micro-segmentation platform for multi-hypervisor environments, container deployments and native workloads running in public cloud environments. What this means is that you now have a single network management and security layer that can span your public and private cloud or clouds. This architecture forms a part of VMware’s vision which is “Any app, on any cloud, from any device”.

New Features:

Managing workloads in Microsoft Azure – NSX-T Data Center 2.2 can now manage workloads in Azure with NSX Cloud meaning you get that single pane of glass for on-premise and Azure (or AWS). This also means that you can have consistent security policies and management across platforms.
Enhanced Data Path in N-VDS – When used in conjunction with vSphere 6.7, you now have support for a virtual switch on a host that is 3 to 5 times faster than the current vSphere Standard Switches (VSS) and vSphere Distributed Switches (VDS).
Improved experience in the Cluster Controller implementation – You can now deploy a Cluster Controller in vCenter, to discover vSphere host clusters on other vCenter servers, allowing you to automatically implement drivers and Edges giving you high availability groups accessible through the GUI or NSX API.
Guest VLAN Tagging – NSX-T now supports VLAN tags to guest VMs connected to logical switches supported by NSX-T VLAN. This allows the NSX admin to have a guest VM connected to several VLANs at the same time, so guest systems connected to the switch will receive packets tagged with the specified VLANs, which you could use to separate management and application traffic for instance.
Load balancing improvements – HTTPS load balancing with SSL termination is now supported, in addition to performance improvements
Layer 2 Bridge – Support for existing or new layer 2 bridges between encapsulated networks and VLAN based networks on the Edge node, meaning you can now implement a firewall within the limits of layer 2.
VLAN ports in logical routers – support for downlinks backed into logical VLAN routers allowing NSX-T Edge services on networks with VLANs.
Terraform provider – Officially supported Terraform provider for the automation of NSX-T logical objects such as switches, routers, firewall rules and grouping. Read more on this here https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/nsxt/index.html
NIOCv3 – Interesting one this as you can now configure limits and shares in network groups for network resources according to the capacity of physical ESXi host adapters, so if you imagine a VM network adapter level of resource control similar to CPU and memory resource allocation for a VM.

These are just some of the new features, for the full list see the link to the release notes above. One thing is for sure, NSX continues to go from strength to strength and continues to give you multiple options for your on premise, public and hybrid clouds, which in my opinion is what is so great about NSX-T. It won’t tie you to one public cloud provider. You have the flexibility to choose the public cloud that suits your business needs best. What’s not to like about that. Thanks for reading

For more information on all things NSX, please check out the VMware product page https://www.vmware.com/products/nsx.html

See here for more on NSX reference architecture