To connect Logical Switch, which NSX Edges should be used?

[princox]

Hi, Everyone

When we connect Logical Switch netwok, which NSX edges do we use?

I've learned that Distributed Logical Router can be used but sometimes I found other people use NSX Edge.

Thanks alot!

[hansroeder]

It depends on what you want to do. In most cases you will connect a Logical Switch to a DLR, and the DLR will handle the routing between the Logical Switches. Of course when you have a Logical Switch that connects a DLR to a ESG, you will connect to both

You could also connect a Logical Switch to a ESG if that ESG is the default gateway for that subnet (for Load Balancing purposes for example). And there might be other use cases for which connecting to a ESG instead of connecting to a DLR would make more sense, but as I said before, it really depends on what you want to do / achieve.

[cnrz]

As both DLR and Edge may function as a router, DLR has distributed architecture which may scale out both in terms of hosts and number of logical switches. Edge is VM form factor, thus all traffic should pass through this VM which has limitations for both total thoughput and number of logical switches that may be connected to the Edge. What Edge provides that DLR does not is Network Services such as Load Balancing, Firewall, NAT, Site-to-Site VPN, SSL Client-to Site VPN etc.

Thus Edge may be more suitable as a Border Router f between Tenants or Different Environments as Test, Development and Production.  For North-South traffic leaving the DC Edge and different services may be used.

DLR suits better for East-West Traffic that Reduces latency and increases throughput for Intra-DC traffic. Each DLR instance on the ESXi host route independently of other instances on the other ESXi hosts.

In most designs both DLR and Edge is used, though only edge or DLR solutions may be possible.

[rajeevsrikant]

Attached is the logical representation for easy reference.