The vCloud NFV platform consists of various network segments. These network segments are primarily divided into infrastructure networks and tenant networks.
The infrastructure network traffic includes VMkernel traffic such as VMware vSphere® vMotion®, VMware Virtual SAN™, VMware vSphere® Replication™, and host management. Tenant networks (physical VLAN networks) such as VM Management VLAN connect the management virtual machines (VMs) to the hypervisor.
All ESXi hosts in the vCloud NFV platform are configured with VMware vSphere® Distributed Switches™ (VDS), which provide the consistent network configuration across multiple hosts as required by VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere. The hypervisor VMkernel networks are configured on an infrastructure VDS, and the tenant networks are configured on a tenant VDS on each of the ESXi hosts.
Infrastructure Networks
Each ESXi host has multiple VMkernel port groups configured for each infrastructure network. The infrastructure networks are
vMotion Network: Used for the vSphere vMotion traffic.
Virtual SAN Network: Used for the Virtual SAN shared storage traffic.
ESXi Management: Used for the ESXi host management traffic.
Replication Network: Used for communication between hosts at the protected and recovery sites.
Tenant Networks
Tenant networks are used to interconnect the VMs of the vCloud NFV platform. These networks are configured on a dedicated tenant VDS in each of the pods. The tenant networks are
VNF Network: Overlay network for VNF to VNF communication.
Management VLAN: VLAN-based network for the management component communication.
Management, Edge, and Resource Pods
The vCloud NFV infrastructure platform contains a Management pod, a Resource pod, and an Edge pod.
Separate vCenter and NSX Manager instances are used to manage the Management pod. The NSX Manager in the Management pod is leveraged to provide network services such as load balancing to vCloud Director Cells.
