VMware NSX-T Data Center: Design

Course subjects

1. Course Introduction

• Introduction and course logistics

• Course objectives

2. NSX Design Concepts

• Identify design terms

• Describe framework and project methodology

• Describe VMware Validated Design™

• Identify customers’ requirements, assumptions, constraints, and risks

• Explain the conceptual design

• Explain the logical design

• Explain the physical design

3. NSX Architecture and Components

• Recognise the main elements in the NSX-T Data Center architecture

• Describe the NSX management cluster and the management plane

• Identify the functions and components of management, control, and data planes

• Describe the NSX Manager sizing options

• Recognise the justification and implication of NSX manager cluster design decisions

• Identify the NSX management cluster design options

4. NSX Edge Design

• Explain the leading practices for edge design

• Describe the NSX Edge VM reference designs

• Describe the bare-metal NSX Edge reference designs

• Explain the leading practices for edge cluster design

• Explain the effect of stateful services placement

• Explain the growth patterns for edge clusters

• Identify design considerations when using L2 bridging services

5. NSX Logical Switching Design

• Describe concepts and terminology in logical switching

• Identify segment and transport zone design considerations

• Identify virtual switch design considerations

• Identify uplink profile, VMware vSphere® Network I/O Control profile, and transport node profile design considerations

• Identify Geneve tunneling design considerations

• Identify BUM replication mode design considerations

6. NSX Logical Routing Design

• Explain the function and features of logical routing

• Describe NSX-T Data Center single-tier and multitier routing architectures

• Identify guidelines when selecting a routing topology

• Describe the BGP and OSPF routing protocol configuration options

• Explain gateway high availability modes of operation and failure detection mechanisms

• Identify how multitier architectures provide control over stateful service location

• Identify VRF Lite requirements and considerations

• Identify the typical NSX scalable architectures

7. NSX Security Design

• Identify different security features available in NSX-T Data Center

• Describe the advantages of an NSX Distributed Firewall

• Describe the use of NSX Gateway Firewall as a perimeter firewall and as an intertenant firewall

• Determine a security policy methodology

• Recognise the NSX-T Data Center security best practices

8. NSX Network Services

• Identify the stateful services available in different edge cluster high availability modes

• Describe failover detection mechanisms

• Explain the design considerations for integrating VMware NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™  with NSX-T Data Center

• Describe stateful and stateless NSX-T Data Center NAT

• Identify benefits of NSX-T Data Center DHCP

• Identify benefits of metadata proxy

• Describe IPSec VPN and L2 VPN

9. Physical Infrastructure Design\

• Identify the components of a switch fabric design

• Assess Layer 2 and Layer 3 switch fabric design implications

• Review guidelines when designing top-of-rack switches

• Review options for connecting transport hosts to the switch fabric

• Describe typical designs for VMware ESXi™  compute hypervisors with two pNICs

• Describe typical designs for ESXi compute hypervisors with four or more pNICs

• Describe a typical design for a KVM compute hypervisor with two pNICs

• Differentiate dedicated and collapsed cluster approaches to SDDC design

10. NSX Multilocation Design

• Explain scale considerations in an NSX-T Data Center multisite design

• Describe the main components of the NSX Federation architecture

• Describe the stretched networking capability in Federation

• Describe stretched security use cases in Federation

• Compare Federation disaster recovery designs

11. NSX Optimisation

• Describe Geneve Offload

• Describe the benefits of Receive Side Scaling and Geneve Rx Filters

• Explain the benefits of SSL Offload

• Describe the effect of Multi-TEP, MTU size, and NIC speed on throughput

• Explain the available N-VDS enhanced datapath modes and use cases

• List the key performance factors for compute nodes and NSX Edge nodes