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 traffic from VMware vSphere® vMotion®, VMware Virtual SAN™, VMware vSphere® Replication™, and host management. Tenant networks (physical VLAN networks) such as Management VLAN, to connect management virtual machines (VMs) to the hypervisor.

All ESXi hosts in the vCloud NFV platform are configured with VMware vSphere® Distributed Switch™ (VDS) devices, which provide consistent network configuration across multiple hosts as required by 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 - For the vSphere vMotion traffic.

  • Virtual SAN Network - For the Virtual SAN shared storage traffic.

  • ESXi Management - For the ESXi host management traffic.

  • Replication Network - 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 clusters. The tenant networks are:

  • VNF Network - VXLAN-based network for VNF to VNF communication.

  • Management VLAN - VLAN-based network for management component communication.

Management, Edge, and Resource Clusters

The vCloud NFV infrastructure platform contains a Management cluster, a Resource cluster, and an Edge cluster.

A separate vCenter and NSX Manager instance is used to manage the Management cluster. The NSX Manager in the Management cluster is leveraged to provide network services such as load balancing to vCloud Director Cells.

Figure 1. vCloud NFV 2.1 Host Network Design
vCloud NFV 2.1 Host Network Design
Figure 2. vCloud NFV 3.x Host Network Design
vCloud NFV 3.x Host Network Design
Note:

NSX controllers and their upgrades are applicable only for NSX Data Center for vSphere and not for NSX-T Data Center.