After manually installing NSX Edge on ESXi or Bare Metal, configure an NSX Edge to the NSX-T Data Center fabric as a transport node.

A transport node is a node that is capable of participating in an NSX-T Data Center overlay or NSX-T Data Center VLAN networking. Any node can serve as a transport node if it contains an N-VDS. Such nodes include but are not limited to NSX Edges.

An NSX Edge can belong to one overlay transport zone and multiple VLAN transport zones. If a VM requires access to the outside world, the NSX Edge must belong to the same transport zone that the VM's logical switch belongs to. Generally, the NSX Edge belongs to at least one VLAN transport zone to provide the uplink access.

Prerequisites

  • Transport zones must be configured.
  • Verify that compute manager is configured. See Add a Compute Manager.
  • An uplink profile must be configured or you can use the default uplink profile for bare-metal NSX Edge nodes.
  • An IP pool must be configured or must be available in the network deployment.
  • At least one unused physical NIC must be available on the host or NSX Edge node.

Procedure

  1. From a browser, log in with admin privileges to an NSX Manager at https://<nsx-manager-ip-address>.
  2. Select System > Fabric > Nodes > Edge Transport Nodes > Edit Edge.
  3. Select the Edge node and click Edit.
  4. Enter the N-VDS information.
    Option Description
    Edge Switch Name Select a VLAN switch from the drop-down menu.
    Transport Zone Select the transport zones that this transport node belongs to. An NSX Edge transport node belongs to at least two transport zones, an overlay for NSX-T Data Center connectivity and a VLAN for uplink connectivity.
    Note: Multiple VTEPs in a transport zone must be configured to the same network segment. If VTEPs in a transport zone are configured to different network segments, BFD sessions cannot be established between the VTEPs.
    Uplink Profile Select the uplink profile from the drop-down menu.

    The available uplinks depend on the configuration in the selected uplink profile.
    IP Assignment Select Use IP Pool or Use Static IP List for the overlay N-VDS. These IP addresses are assigned as VTEPs to the NSX Edge transport node. Multiple VTEPs on an NSX Edge must be in the same subnet.
    • If you select Use Static IP List, you must specify a list of comma-separated IP addresses, a gateway, and a subnet mask.
    • If you selected Use IP Pool for IP assignment, specify the IP pool name.
    DPDK Fastpath Interfaces / Virtual NICs Select the data path interface name for the uplink interface.
    Note: To ensure that traffic flows through logical switches configured with named teaming policies, map all uplinks in the default teaming policy to physical network interfaces on the NSX Edge VM.
  5. View the connection status on the Transport Nodes page.
    After adding the NSX Edge as a transport node, the connection status changes to Up in 10-12 minutes.
  6. To successfully configure firewall rules on the NSX Edge node, enable service core on the transport node.

    set debug

    set dataplane service-core enabled

    restart service dataplane

  7. (Optional) View the transport node with the GET https://<nsx-manager>/api/v1/transport-nodes/<transport-node-id> API call.
  8. (Optional) For status information, use the GET https://<nsx-mgr>/api/v1/transport-nodes/<transport-node-id>/status API call.
  9. After an NSX Edge node is migrated to a new host using vCenter Server, you might find NSX Manager UI reporting stale configuration details (Compute, Datastore, Network, SSH, NTP, DNS, Search Domains) of the NSX Edge. To get the latest configuration details of NSX Edge on the new host, run the API command.
    POST api/v1/transport-nodes/<transport-node-id>?action=refresh_node_configuration&resource_type=EdgeNode

What to do next

Add the NSX Edge node to an NSX Edge cluster. See Create an NSX Edge Cluster.