Do I need special hardware for NSX?

[ekhmahg]

Hi,

I am new to VMware NSX, I have been working mainly with vCenter with distributed switches in which I needed to create the vlans in the external switches. Now, I would like to know more about the VMware NSX and I found alot of marketing materials, and less technical materials.

I have mainly studies the document below: (NSX design guide)

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/nsx/vmw-nsx-network-virtualization-design-guide.pdf

My question is: Do I need special hardware if I want to have virtualized networking solution based on VMware NSX? what I understood from the above document is that I don't need, but at the same time I see many vendors say they support and fully integrate with VMware NSX?

Could someone explain to me this?

I have good networking technical background btw.

Best Regards,

Khalid Mahgoub

[MKguy]

NSX doesn't require special server or networking hardware by itself, it works with anything that can offers basic layer 3 IP transport capabilities.

However, you will need special networking equipment when you want to integrate non-NSX/VXLAN aware physical servers or physical VLANs with your NSX deployment (VXLAN gateways/physical VTEPs or such).

I highly recommend you to watch these technical and very informative videos by Ivan Pepelnjak:

http://demo.ipspace.net/get/NSXArch#Videos

And basically anything on his blog that talks about NSX/VXLAN etc:

http://blog.ipspace.net/search/label/Overlay%20networks

Also a good read:

http://bradhedlund.com/category/nsx/

[admin]

From the network perspective (switches / routers):

NSX for vSphere:

• requires that physical network and server NICs support MTU of 1600 bytes or more.

NSX for Multihypervisor:

• highly recommended not to run overlay traffic through firewalls if you use STT encapsulation for best performance. Firewall may not have an ability to pass STT correctly, unless it has explicit support for it
• no requirement on larger MTU

From server perspective:

No special requirements, but if maximum network performance is important, you will need to verify if NIC cards you chose for your servers are capable of supporting your requirements. Work with your VMware team, who can help you selecting the right NICs.

[shijimol]

You can refer the NSX installation and configuration document for the NSX system requirements

http://pubs.vmware.com/NSX-6/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/nsx_6_install.pdf

[waniane39]

Cisco wants us to use Aci. Unlike nsx, it us tied to their hw

nsx is hw agnostic

btw, std mtu is 1500, 1600 is outside the allowed range unless jumbo size us implemented

[ekhmahg]

Well, My conclusion now is that I don't need any special hardware. there are recommendation for the connectivity, but still NSX doesn't require any special equipments.

Thank you all for your replies.