Hi, In my previous post, you saw How we could make an NSX Home LAB, in this post I show you a comprehensive picture of how I want to do that.

1- How to make NSX-T Home LAB?

• Physical Network Design
• IP and VLAN Design
• DC
• vCenter
• ESXi Host

2- How to install NSX-T

3- Add Compute Manager

4- Add Second NSX-T Appliance to the cluster

5- Add Third NSX-T Appliance to the cluster

6-Set NSX-T Manager Virtual IP address

7- Add IP Address Pool

8- Add Uplink Profiles

9- Add Transport Zones

10- Prepare Host Transport Nodes

11- Add Segment

12- Install NSX Edge1

13- Install NSX Edge2

14- Add Edge Cluster

15- Add Tier-1 Gateways

16- Add Tier-0 Gateways

Finish 🙂

Hi, I want to start installing and configuring NSX in my environment today.

There is a question How can I build a Nested laboratory?

For my nested lab, I used the below physical devices:

1- 1 * ProLiant DL Gen9

2- 1 * Cisco Switch

3- 1 * Firewall

Physical Network Design:

Physical = Firewall to Cisco Switch = Trunk

Physical = Cisco Switch to ProLiant DL Gen9 = Trunk

VDS = 2 * UPLINK to Physical NICs (PNIC)

Port Group on the standard switch or VDS ESXi host on ProLiant DL Gen9

• LAB-MGMT-VLAN-PG = We used for MGMT VMS like DC, vCenter, NSX MGR
• LAB-MGMT-Trunk-PG = ESXi MGMT
• LAB-SW-TOR-Trunk = We used to connect Virtual Router Cisco to ESXi
• LAB-VLAN-To-Firewall = We used to connect Virtual Router Cisco to Firewall

Note: You can have more port groups for other purposes like VSAN, vMotion, and…

IP and VLAN Design

Install Management Services on Physical Server

DC

I need to install a DC as a Domain Controller and DNS server. I install khoshraftar.com, and I used the LAB-MGMT-VLAN-PG port group to connect my DC to the network. I define all A records that we need for our services link vCenter, ESXi, NSX manager, and…

vCenter

Furthermore, I need to install a vCenter server. I used the LAB-MGMT-VLAN-PG port group to connect my vCenter to the network. I created a Datacenter and 2 clusters (cluster Compute and MGMT).

I created a VDS switch and These below port groups.

• LAB-MGMT-Trunk-PG = We used for MGMT ESXi
• Edge-Transport-overlay-vtep-Trunk = We used for NSX-Edge VMs
• Edge-uplink2-Trunk = We used it for NSX-Edge VMs
• Edge-uplink3-Trunk = We used it for NSX-Edge VMs

ESXi

Likewise, I need to install ESXi as a nested hypervisor. Each ESXi host has 3 network cards.

• Network Card1 = LAB-MGMT-Trunk-PG
• Network Card2 = LAB-SW-TOR-Trunk
• Network Card3 = LAB-SW-TOR-Trunk

Note1: I configured VLAN Mgmt in ESXi VAMI –> System Customization –> Configure Management Network –> VLAN.

Note2: I Enable Promiscuous Mode on all port groups.

NSX Manager

I install NSX Manager and connect to the LAB-MGMT-VLAN-PG port group.

Finish 🙂