VMware NSX: Design [V4.x]

1 Course Introduction

• Introduction and course logistics

• Course objectives

2 NSX Design Concepts

• Identify design terms

• Describe framework and project methodology

• Describe the role of VMware Cloud Foundation™ in NSX 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

• Recognize the main elements in the NSX 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

• Recognize 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 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 the NSX 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 EVPN requirements and design considerations

• Identify VRF Lite requirements and considerations

• Identify the typical NSX scalable architectures

7 NSX Security Design

• Identify different security features available in NSX

• 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

• Recognize the NSX security best practices

8 NSX Network Services

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

• Describe failover detection mechanisms

• Compare NSX NAT solutions

• Explain how to select DHCP and DNS services

• Compare policy-based and route-based IPSec VPN

• Describe an L2 VPN topology that can be used to interconnect data centers

• Explain the design considerations for integrating VMware NSX® Advanced Load Balancer™ with NSX

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

• Differentiate dedicated and collapsed cluster approaches to SDDC design

10 NSX Multilocation Design

• Explain scale considerations in an NSX 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 the Federation disaster recovery designs

11 NSX Optimization and DPU-Based Acceleration

• 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 enhanced datapath modes and use cases

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

• Describe DPU-Based Acceleration

• Define the NSX features supported by DPUs

• Describe the hardware and networking configurations supported with DPUs