You can bridge a given logical switch to a single VLAN with one active bridge instance. One logical router can have multiple bridging instances, however, the same VXLAN and VLAN cannot connect to more than one bridge instance.

You can use a logical switch to participate in both distributed logical routing and layer 2 bridging. Therefore, the traffic from the bridged logical switch does not need to flow through the centralized Edge VM. The traffic from the bridged logical switch can flow to the physical VLAN through the L2 bridge instance. The bridge instance gets enabled on the ESXi host where the DLR control VM is running.

For more information about L2 bridging in NSX, see the "NSX Distributed Routing and Layer 2 Bridging Integration" section in the NSX Network Virtualization Design Guide at https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-27683.

Tip: You can create multiple sets of layer 2 bridging instances and associate them with different DLRs. By following this practice, you can spread the bridging load across different ESXi hosts.

Prerequisites

  • An NSX distributed logical router must be deployed in your environment.
  • You cannot use a universal logical router to configure bridging, and you cannot add a bridge to a universal logical switch.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the vSphere Web Client.
  2. Click Networking & Security > NSX Edges.
  3. Double-click the distributed logical router that you want to use for bridging.
    Note: The bridge instance must be created in the same routing instance to which the VXLAN is connected. One bridge instance can have one VXLAN and one VLAN, and the VXLAN and VLAN cannot overlap. The same VXLAN and VLAN cannot connect to more than one bridge instance.
  4. Click Manage > Bridging.
  5. Click Add.
  6. Enter a name for the bridge.
    Caution: Bridge name must not exceed 40 characters. Bridge configuration fails when the name exceeds 40 characters.
  7. Select the logical switch that you want to create a bridge for.
  8. Select the distributed virtual port group to which you want to bridge the logical switch.
  9. Click Publish for the changes to the bridging configuration to take effect.
    The logical switch that is used for bridging appears with Routing Enabled specified. For more information, see Add a Logical Switch and Connect Virtual Machines to a Logical Switch.