NSX Federation Key Concepts

NSX Federation introduces some new terms and concepts in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).

NSX Federation Systems: Global Manager and Local Manager

An NSX Federation environment within VMware Cloud Foundation includes two types of management systems.

Global Manager: a system similar to NSX Manager that federates multiple Local Managers.

Local Manager: an NSX Manager system in charge of network and security services for a VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

NSX Federation Span: Local and Cross-Instance

When you create a networking object from Global Manager, it can span one or more VMware Cloud Foundation instances.

Local: the object spans only one instance.

Cross-instance: the object spans more than one instance. You do not directly configure the span of a segment. A segment has the same span as the gateway it is attached to.

NSX Federation Tunnel Endpoints

In an NSX Federation environment, there are two types of tunnel endpoints.

Tunnel End Point (TEP): the IP address of a transport node (Edge node or Host) used for Geneve encapsulation within an instance.

Remote Tunnel End Points (RTEP): the IP address of a transport node (Edge node only) used for Geneve encapsulation across instances.

NSX Federation Tier Gateways

An NSX Federation in VMware Cloud Foundation environment includes three types of tier-1 gateways.

Type	Description	Managed By	Scope
standalone tier-1 gateway	Configured in the Local Manager and used for services such as the Load Balancer.	Local Manager	Single VMware Cloud Foundation instance
local-instance tier-1 gateway	Configured in the Global Manager at a single location, this is a global tier-1 gateway used for segments that exist within a single VMware Cloud Foundation Instance.	Global Manager	Single VMware Cloud Foundation instance
cross-instance tier-1 gateway	Configured in the Global Manager, this is a global Tier-1 gateway used for segments that exist across multiple VMware Cloud instances.	Global Manager	Multiple VMware Cloud Foundation instance