NSX Manager is the application that you use to administer your NSX-T environment. In a production environment, for fault tolerance, you should deploy a cluster of three NSX Manager nodes, each running on a separate ESXi host.

Deploy the First NSX Manager

The first manager node is deployed through VC's Deploy OVF Template wizard.

  1. In VC, right click NSX-cluster and select Deploy OVF Template.
  2. Follow the prompts and provide the following information.
    Location of the ova file The location where you downloaded the ova file.
    Virtual machine name NSX-mgr-1
    Location for the VM NSX-cluster
    Compute resource 192.168.10.11 (ESXi-1's IP address)
    Deployment configuration Select the size that you determined in the preparation step.
    Storage Storage-1
    Virtual disk format Thin Provision
    Network 1 PG-mgmt (the management port group used by VC)
    IP allocation Static Manual
    IP protocol IPv4
    Hostname nsx-mgr-1
    Rolename NSX Manager
    NSX Site Name Site-1
    Default IPv4 Gateway 192.168.10.1
    Management Network IPv4 Address 192.168.10.14
    Management Network Netmask 255.255.255.0
    DNS Server list 192.168.38.1
    NTP Server list 192.168.38.2
  3. Wait for the deployment to finish. The Recent Tasks panel at the bottom of the vSphere Client window will indicate when the task is complete.
  4. Power on the NSX Manager VM.
  5. Log in to NSX-mgr-1 at https://192.168.10.14.
  6. Go to System > Licenses and click Add to add your NSX-T license.
  7. Go to System > Fabric > Compute Managers and click Add to add the VC as a compute manager.
    Follow the prompts and provide the following information:
    Name VC-1
    FQDN or IP Address 192.168.10.10
    Username The administrator's login name to the VC.
    Password The administrator's password.
  8. Click Add at the warning Thumbprint is Missing.
  9. Wait until Registration Status is Registered. You can click Refresh to refresh the status.

Deploy NSX Managers 2 and 3

  1. Go to System > Appliances.
  2. Click Add NSX Appliance.
  3. Follow the prompts and provide the following information:.
    Hostname nsx-mgr-2
    Management IP/Netmask 192.168.10.15/24
    Management Gateway 192.168.10.1
    DNS Servers 192.168.38.1
    NTP Servers 192.168.38.2
    Node Size Select the size that you determined in the preparation step.
    Compute Manager VC-1
    Compute Cluster NSX-cluster
    Host 192.168.10.12
    Datastore Storage-1
    Virtual Disk Format Thin Provision
    Network PG-mgmt
    Enable SSH Make a selection based on your datacenter's policy.
    Enable Root Access Make a selection based on your datacenter's policy.
    System Username root
    Root Password
    CLI Username admin
    CLI Password
    Audit CLI Username audit
    Audit CLI password
  4. Click Install Appliance.
  5. Wait until the NSX Manager node is installed and available.
  6. Repeat steps 2-5 and deploy NSX Manager 3 with management IP 192.168.10.16 on ESXi host 192.168.10.13.