Hardware Base VXLAN

[Bilal233]

Hi Expert  , i need to know  the advantages of hardware base VXLAN support switch in NSX environment .

[rgudipati]

Hardware vtep gateways are basically vxlan enabled physical switches.

These devices act as a bridge between vxlan enabled workloads and vlan segments.

Some benefits of hardware vteps are.

1.If you want to extend vxlan to areas where you cannot host a sotware gateway , typically TOR.

2.High bandwidth

3.High Port density.

You can check the compatibility of physical switches(hardware VTEPs) with NSX at Vmware compatibility guide.

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

[Sreec · Accepted solution]

There are advantages and disadvantages with hardware vxlan model and we should be aware of both. First and foremost , all license models are not supported for HW-Vtep

1)NSX Data Center Advanced 2)NSX Data Center Enterprise Plus are the supported models. VMware Knowledge Base  (NSX for vSphere 6.4.1+)

In a nutshell , if you have use cases for bridging of VXLAN network identifiers (VNIs) with virtual LANs (VLANs) - Software Bridging or hardware bridging can be used.  NSX controller maps the VXLAN segments to the VLAN segments on specific ports of hardware Switch and pushes this configuration to the switch. NSX uses the OVSDB management protocol to push the configuration changes to the switch.

1)Any type of ACLs,QoS are not supported for hardware VTEPs.

2)When this feature is enabled, a DLR cannot be used for the logical switch in NSX.

3) Universal logical switches  was not supporting Hardware vtep ( I don't remember if support got added recently, you may double check this point|)

Below mentioned is one model with vendor tested/supported configuration which can be deployed in Standalone or VPC design.

VMware Compatibility Guide - Hardware VXLAN Gateway

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/pdf/vi_hvxg_guide.pdf