You can use the ping command to test east-west and north-south connectivity.

Deploy Test VMs

  1. Deploy Test-VM-1 (IP address 10.1.1.11, default gateway: 10.1.1.1) on ESXi-1.
  2. In VC, edit Test-VM-1's settings. Set Network adapter 1 to LS1.1.

    VM hardware settings for Test-VM-1

  3. Deploy Test-VM-2 (IP address 10.1.2.11, default gateway: 10.1.2.1) on ESXi-2.
  4. In VC, edit Test-VM-1's settings. Set Network adapter 1 to LS1.2.
  5. Deploy Test-VM-3 (IP address 10.2.1.11, default gateway: 10.2.1.1) on ESXi-3.
  6. In VC, edit Test-VM-3's settings. Set Network adapter 1 to LS2.1.

Test East-West Connectivity

  1. From Test-VM-1, ping the IP address of Test-VM-2 and Test-VM-3. For example:
    #ping 10.1.2.11
Pinging 10.1.2.11 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.1.2.11: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=110
Reply from 10.1.2.11: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=110
Reply from 10.1.2.11: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=110
Reply from 10.1.2.11: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=110
Ping statistics for 10.1.2.11:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 3ms, Average = 2ms
  2. From Test-VM-2, ping the IP address of Test-VM-1 and Test-VM-3.
  3. From Test-VM-3, ping the IP address of Test-VM-1 and Test-VM-2.

Test North-South Connectivity

  1. From Test-VM-1, ping 192.168.50.1 (the downlink interface of the physical router).
  2. From Test-VM-2, ping 192.168.50.1.
  3. From Test-VM-3, ping 192.168.50.1.

Configuring Other Features

There are many other networking and security features that you can configure. For more information, see the complete NSX documentation set at https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-NSX.