VMware NSX Architecture, NSX Planes and Components

Understanding the architecture of NSX platform is imperative to continue successful operation of NSX.

NSX Operates on a variety of planes and those planes are occupied by various components. Knowledge of those components and on which plane they operate is a key to the deployment, configuration, operational management, and troubleshooting NSX.

In this post we'll be discussing about NSX architecture, various planes of NSX operations and various component in each plane.


About NSX Architecture

Software-defined data center (SDDC) architecture moves beyond the server, extending virtualization technologies across the entire physical data center infrastructure. NSX, the network virtualization platform, is a key product in the SDDC architecture. With NSX virtualization now delivers for networking what it has already delivered for compute. NSX Consists of several planes of operations, namely , Cloud Management Platform, Management Plane, Control Plane and Data Plane.





NSX Planes of Operations and Component Summary

With network virtualization, the functional equivalent of a network hypervisor reproduces the complete set of L2 to L7 networking services (including switching, routing, access control, firewalling, QoS, and load balancing) in software.




NSX planes of operations are:
  • Management: The NSX management plan is built by VMware NSX Manager, the centralized network management component of NSX. It provides a single point of configuration and REST API entry points.
  • Control: The NSX control plane runs in the VMware NSX Controller cluster. NSX Controller is an advanced distributed state management system that provides control plane functions for NSX logical switching and routing functions.
  • Data: The NSX data plane consists of the NSX virtual switch, which is based on the VMware vSphere Distributed Switch with additional components to enable services.

The consumption of NSX services can be driven directly through the VMware NSX Manager user interface, which is available in vSpehere WebClient. Additionally , end users usually tie network virtualization to their cloud management platform for deploying applications. VMware vRealize Automation can exist in the cloud management platform and control the deployment and operation of the NSX components.



Learn more about VMware NSX here


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