esxi hosts default hardware requirement and DLR control VMs' ability?

[niceguy001]

hi guys,

I've tried to study NSX 6 documents for a while,

since i'm a noob on NSX, there are some simple doubts i 'd like to deal with:

1. the system requirements for NSX document says "NSX 6.3.x requires 8 GB of memory on prepared ESXi hosts running networking and security services"

does that mean all the hosts in the DC have to prepare 8 GB ram for each of themselves,

or just the hosts running NSX key function(e.g. edge VM) need the 8 GB ram?

2. is the DLR control VM a real VM? if not, why would it need to be deploy(for dynamic routing protocol between DLR & ESG)?

3. does the DLR control VM cpu & ram resources really matter in NSX environment scaling?

sorry about the easy questions.

thanks anywhere.

[cnrz]

1. NSX 6.3.x requires 8GB of memory on prepared ESXi hosts running networking and security services. I think this not very clear, it seems like additional memory space for non VM kernel modules such as vsfwd, netcpa, Guest Introspection, DLR instances but not very sure about this.

http://pubs.vmware.com/nsx-63/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/nsx_63_install.pdf

2. DLR Control VM is a real VM very similar to Edge VM. For dynamic routing protocols ESG (Edge Service Gateway) and DLR Control VM establish dynamic routing protocol neighborship. DLR Control VM in turn publishes the next-hops to the DLR instances (kernel modules on the ESXi hosts, these are not VMs). The traffic passes through these kernel modules (as this is the Data Plane), and DLR Control VM is the Control Plane (similar to the Supervisor module on swithes).

http://www.routetocloud.com/2014/06/nsx-distributed-logical-router/

3. DLR Control VM is a Virtual Appliance that is deployed through NSX Manager, it has 512 MB RAM and 500 MB Disk Space which is fixed. What can be customized is the Edge Service Gateways which may be chosen according to features:

http://www.bkdatacentre.com/2016/03/vmware-nsx-edge-and-vm-sizing/

NSX Edge and VM Sizing

	CPU	RAM	Disk
Compact	1	512	512MB
Large	2	1GB	512MB
Quad-L	4	1GB	512MB
XL	6	8GB	4.5GB (4GB Swap)
NSX-M	4	12	60GB
NSX-M Large Scale	8	24	60GB
DLR Control VM	1	512	500MB
NSX Controller	4	4	20GB

Which NSX Edge size to choose:

This is straight from the VMware NSX Installation guide, but should explain which to size to choose.

The Large NSX Edge (my default) has more CPU, memory, and disk space than the Compact NSX Edge (I only use in my lab or for small POC/Test), and supports a bigger number of concurrent SSL VPN-Plus users.

The X-Large NSX Edge is suited for environments which have Load Balancer with millions of concurrent sessions (Personally use XL with all LB’s as I have seen poor performance with compact LB’s with a small number of users).

The Quad Large NSX Edge is recommended for high throughput and requires a high connection rate.