Managing NSX-T Data Center on a vSphere Distributed Switch

There are two options to configure and run NSX-T Data Center on a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS).

Option 1: In NSX-T Data Center 3.2, you can create a Distributed Firewall on VDS without deploying the N-VDS switch. You can use this capability in data centers and workloads where segmentation, visibility, or advanced security capabilities are desired. This ensures distributed firewall capabilities work on a VM whether it is managed by an NSX-T Data Center host switch or not.

Option 2: In NSX-T Data Center 3.0, a host transport node could be prepared by installing NSX-T Data Center on a VDS switch. In releases 3.0 and 3.1, to prepare an NSX Edge VM as a transport node, you could only use an N-VDS switch. But, you can connect an NSX Edge VM to any of the supported switches (VSS, VDS, or N-VDS) depending on the topology in your network.

After you prepare a cluster of transport node hosts with VDS as the host switch, you can do the following:

• Manage NSX-T Data Center transport nodes on a VDS switch.
• Realize a segment created in NSX-T Data Center as an NSX-T Data Center Distributed Virtual port group in vCenter Server.
• Migrate VMs between vSphere Distributed Virtual port groups and NSX-T Data Center Distributed Virtual port groups.
• Send VMs traffic running on both these type of port groups.