NSX Edge nodes are service appliances with pools of capacity, dedicated to running network and security services.
An
NSX Edge can belong to one overlay transport zone and multiple VLAN transport zones. An
NSX Edge belongs to at least one VLAN transport zone to provide the uplink access.
Note: If you plan to create transport nodes from a template VM, make sure that there are no certificates on the host in
/etc/vmware/nsx/. nsx-proxy does not create a certificate if a certificate already exists.
Important: When you deploy an Edge Node through
NSX Manager, the system records the node's MO-REF. This MO-REF is required to make requests to
VMware vCenter for any subsequent operations that needs to performed on the node, such as redeploy and delete. However, through customer inventory operations at
VMware vCenter the MO-REF could change. If MO-REF changes, the
NSX operations for that edge node will fail. For example, an edge node redeploy will fail to get rid of the node and the new node will get created with the same IP as the old one. To help you mitigate this issue, the system generates some alarms. For more information about these alarms, see the
NSX Administration Guide.
Prerequisites
- Transport zones must be configured. See Create Transport Zones.
- 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 NSX Edge nodes. See Create an Uplink Profile.
- An IP pool must be configured or must be available in the network deployment. See Create an IP Pool for Tunnel Endpoint IP Addresses.
- Prepare uplinks. For example, distributed port groups as trunk in vCenter Server or NSX Segments in NSX.
- Create distributed trunk port groups in VMware vCenter for management, TEP and overlay networks if you plan to connect NSX Edge network interfaces to a VDS in VMware vCenter.
- Create VLAN trunk segments in NSX if you plan to connect NSX Edge network interfaces to NSX VLAN segments or logical switches.
- Before you can use NSX Edge VM datapath interfaces in Uniform Passthrough (UPT) mode, meet the following conditions:
Note: UPT mode is not supported on NSX Edge Bare Metal hosts.
- NSX Edge hardware version is 20 (vmx-20) or later. Previous NSX Edge hardware versions do not support UPT mode.
- Verify that the memory reservation on the configured NSX Edge is set to 100%.
- From the vSphere Web Client, enable UPT on the NSX Edge VM network adapter. See the Change the Virtual Machine Network Adapter Configuration topic in vSphere Virtual Machine Administration guide.
- At least one of the NSX Edge VM datapath interface must be backed by an ESXi host that hosts a Data Processing Unit-based SmartNIC. A SmartNIC is a NIC card that provides network traffic processing using a Data Processing Unit (DPU), a programmable processor on the NIC card, in addition to the traditional functions of a NIC card. For more information related to DPU, see NSX on vSphere Lifecycle Manager with VMware vSphere Distributed Services Engine.
- Starting with NSX 4.0.1.1, NSX Edge VM hardware version will no longer default to virtualHW.version 13. NSX Edge VM hardware will depend on the underlying version of the ESXi host. VM hardware versions compatible with ESXi hosts are listed in KB article 2007240.
Procedure
What to do next
Add the NSX Edge node to an NSX Edge cluster. See Create an NSX Edge Cluster.