As a best practice, you must deploy a highly available NSX Manager instance so that the NSX-T central control plane can continue propagating configuration to the transport nodes. You also select an NSX Manager appliance size according to the number of ESXi hosts required to run the SDDC tenant workloads.
Deployment Type
You can deploy NSX Manager in a one-node configuration or as a three-node cluster for high availability.
Decision ID |
Design Decision |
Design Justification |
Design Implication |
---|---|---|---|
VCF-WLD-NSX-CFG-001 |
Deploy three NSX Manager nodes for the VI workload domain in the first cluster in the management domain for configuring and managing the network services for customer workloads. |
Customer workloads can be placed on isolated virtual networks, using load balancing, logical switching, dynamic routing, and logical firewalls services. |
None. |
Sizing Compute and Storage Resources for NSX Manager
Appliance Size |
vCPU |
Memory (GB) |
Storage (GB) |
Scale |
---|---|---|---|---|
Extra-Small |
2 |
8 |
300 |
Cloud Service Manager only |
Small |
4 |
16 |
300 |
Proof of concept |
Medium |
6 |
24 |
300 |
Up to 128 ESXi hosts |
Large |
12 |
48 |
300 |
Up to 1,024 ESXi hosts |
Decision ID |
Design Decision |
Design Justification |
Design Implication |
---|---|---|---|
VCF-WLD-NSX-CFG-002 |
Deploy each node in the NSX Manager cluster for the workload domain as a large-size appliance. |
A large-size appliance is sufficient for providing network services to the SDDC tenant workloads. |
You must provide enough compute and storage resources in the management domain to support this NSX Manager cluster. |
High Availability of NSX Manager for a Single VMware Cloud Foundation Instance
The NSX Manager cluster for the VI workload domain runs on the default management vSphere cluster. vSphere HA protects the NSX Manager appliances by restarting an NSX Manager appliance on a different ESXi host if a primary ESXi host failure occurs.
Decision ID |
Design Decision |
Design Justification |
Design Implication |
---|---|---|---|
VCF-WLD-NSX-CFG-003 |
Create a virtual IP (VIP) address for the NSX Manager cluster for the VI workload domain. |
Provides high availability of the user interface and API of NSX Manager. |
|
VCF-WLD-NSX-CFG-004 |
Apply VM-VM anti-affinity rules in vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (vSphere DRS) to the NSX Manager appliances. |
Keeps the NSX Manager appliances running on different ESXi hosts for high availability. |
|
VCF-WLD-NSX-CFG-005 |
In vSphere HA, set the restart priority policy for each NSX Manager appliance to high. |
|
If the restart priority for another management appliance is set to highest, the connectivity delays for services will be longer. |
High Availability of NSX Manager for a Single VMware Cloud Foundation Instance with Multiple Availability Zones
The NSX Manager cluster runs on the default management vSphere cluster in the first availability zone. If a failure in this zone occurs, the NSX Manager cluster is failed over to the second availability zone.
Decision ID |
Design Decision |
Design Justification |
Design Implication |
---|---|---|---|
VCF-WLD-NSX-CFG-006 |
Add the NSX Manager appliances to the virtual machine group for the first availability zone. |
Ensures that, by default, the NSX Manager appliances are powered on within the primary availability zone hosts group. |
None. |