Configuring Bare Metal Server to Use NSX-T Data Center

To use NSX-T Data Center on a bare metal (BM) server, you must install supported third-party packages.

Bare Metal Concepts:

• Application - represents the actual application running on the bare metal server, such as a web server or a data base server.
• Application Interface - represents the network interface card (NIC) which the application uses for sending and receiving traffic. One application interface per bare metal server is supported.
• Management Interface - represents the NIC which manages the bare metal server.
• VIF - the peer of the application interface which is attached to the logical switch. This is similar to a VM vNIC.

NSX-T Data Center supports the bare metal server in two ways: as a host transport node and as a host for NSX Manager.

Make sure that you have the supported bare metal server versions. See Bare Metal Server System Requirements.

Note: If your NSX Edges are in VM form factor and you intend to use the NSX DHCP service (deployed on VLAN-based logical switch), you must set the forged transmits option to Accept on the bare metal hosts on which the NSX Edges are deployed. See Forged Transmits in the vSphere product documentation.