NetworkGalaxy - by Prashant Sahu

In this post we'll discuss about NSX control plane in detail. I'll describe the  NSX controllers and functions along with NSX Controller workload distribution. We'll also identify the user world agent in the control plane and the control plane component interactions. NSX Control Plane 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. It is the central control point for all logical switches within a network and maintains information about all hosts, logical switches (VXLANs), and distributed logical routers.

Transport Zones A transport zone controls which hosts a logical switch can reach. It can span one or more host clusters also known as transport nodes. If two transport nodes are in the same transport zone, VMs hosted on those transport nodes can be attached to the NSX logical switch segments that are also in that transport zone. If VMs are attached to switches that are in different transport zones, the VMs cannot communicate with each other. A Transport Zone defines a collection of hosts that can communicate with each other across a physical network infrastructure. VM communication between different hosts within the same TZ happens over one or more interfaces defined as a Tunnel End Point (TEP). VM communication to a physical network happens using logical routers and not TEP.

While working on Azure, PowerShell can be your friend when you need some information quickly, live and that is not visible in Azure Portal. Following are few of the commands that can be helpful for a network administrator working on Azure. List all virtual network subnets by using PowerShell Get-AzureRmVirtualNetwork -Name <My-vnet-name> -ResourceGroupName <vnet-resource-group-name> | Get-AzureRmVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig | Format-Table

If you are asked to explain physical and logical connectivity of Azure Express Route circuit by looking into the portal, It might be little confusing, if you are not familiar with Azure Portal. So here is the network diagram showing physical and logical connectivity of Express Route setup.  A single express Route Direct circuit has built-in redundancy with two links, that extends from On-Premise with redundant routers to Azure Cloud with redundant Virtual Network Gateways, through redundant routers in Connectivity Partner Location.

You have 100s of network switches or routers that you need to upgrade. How much time would it take for you to do the upgrades? There are a lot number of sub-tasks involved while upgrading IOS image of a Cisco router or a switch. This time of upgradation can be reduced through automation from various Enterprise Configuration Management tools that also have ability to upgrade network OS. Though these tools give an easy to use graphical interface, but this requires you to have appropriate license and also restricts you to customize your upgrade process.