We are very excited about the following key NSX Cloud features which are shipping as part of the latest NSX release – NSX 2.3
Support for AWS:
NSX 2.3 now extends support for native AWS workloads. This is a big step towards VMware’s pursuit for a truly Hybrid Cloud NSX Solution. NSX customers can now simplify and scale operations across a growing number of accounts, subscriptions, virtual networks, availability zones and regions in AWS, Azure and private cloud. Furthermore, this opens the doors for adding more networking platform capabilities such as service insertion, etc. Look out for more information on this in our future blogs.
Free Visibility into Public Cloud Workloads:
If you have an NSX-T based Datacenter deployed within your on-premise environment, it only takes one additional VM to extend your visibility to include all your Public Cloud workloads. Here is how you go about it: In the NSX-T download page, under the Product Downloads section, you will see the link to download “NSX Manager / NSX Cloud Service Manager / NSX Policy Manager”. This is the NSX Unified Appliance which can be configured as an NSX Manager, or NSX Cloud Service Manager or NSX Policy Manager. It is available in both OVA and QCOW2 format. So, one can download it to an ESXi or KVM host.
If you are an existing NSX user, you already have a unified appliance deployed with the “NSX Manager” persona. For public cloud workloads visibility, you can continue to use the same NSX Manager and NSX Controller that you have already deployed for on-premise. You just have to deploy another instance of the Unified Appliance with the “Cloud Service Manager” persona. You do not need an NSX Cloud license to deploy and use Cloud Service Manager(CSM) for Visibility into public cloud workloads. You need NSX Cloud licenses only to manage (enforce policies within) your public cloud workloads. This is a good starting point if you want to get a peek into your public cloud workloads and see what’s out there. Once you have the CSM deployed and operational, go to the CSM, configure the cloud credentials as shown below and you will immediately be able to query your AWS and Azure accounts for your public cloud workloads. You do need to ensure that CSM has external internet connectivity. If you use a Proxy server within the datacenter, CSM already supports configuring a proxy. More details on CSM deployment and configuration are in the product documentation.
I am an NSX-V user, do I get Public Cloud Visibility for free as well?
Oh yeah! NSX-V and NSX-T can co-exist. If you are an existing NSX-V user and would like to leave the on-prem env alone, download the Unified Appliance for NSX-T twice. Once with “NSX Manager” persona and once with “Cloud Service Manager” persona. Voila, you should be good to go!
That ain’t all, there is more to the NSX Cloud 2.3 Release. VPN support, Multi-Region Support and Zero-touch deployment for the NSX agent in MSFT Azure are some of the other cool features which have found a place in NSX Cloud 2.3. We will be sending out more updates your way to talk about all these other cool features. But for now, get a free peek into your public cloud workloads and stay tuned!
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