Objective 2.1 – Create and Manage Logical Switches
- Create/Delete Logical Switches
- Assign and configure IP addresses
- Connect a Logical Switch to an NSX Edge
- Deploy services on a Logical Switch
- Connect/Disconnect virtual machines to/from a Logical Switch
- Test Logical Switch connectivity
Create/Delete Logical Switches
A NSX logical switch is similar to a VLAN in that it allows VMs that are connected to it to communicate and just as a VLAN has a ID, a logical switch is assigned a VNI (VXLAN Network Identifier). The major difference between a standard VLAN and a logical switch is the number that you create. While you are limited to 4096 VLANs, you can create up to 16 million logical switches!
To create a logical switch, navigate to Networking & Security > Logical Switches and click the green +
When you create your logical switch and select the transport zone to make it a part of, it inherits whatever the replication mode is for the transport zone. In my case that is Unicast.
The option for Enable IP Discovery is enabled by default. This setting reduces ARP traffic flooding.
Enable MAC Learning builds a VLAN/MAC learning table on each vNIC. If your VMs have multiple MAC addresses or are using vNICs that are trunking VLANs, then you want to enable this option.
When you create the logical switch, it consumes one of your Segment IDs as seen here:
It also creates a “virtualwire” distributed port group with the segment ID in the name. T
To delete a logical switch, its as simple as right clicking on the logical switch and selecting Remove.
Assign and configure IP addresses
You can’t add a IP address to a logical switch. You add the IP address to the interface of the Edge device or logical router that is connected to the logical switch. This will be covered later on in the study guide.
Connect a Logical Switch to an NSX Edge
Once you have a NSX Edge or distributed logical router deploy, you can attach a logical switch to it by navigating to Networking & Security > Logical Switches and right click the logical switch and click Connect Edge
Select the edge device that you want to connect to. Click Next
Select the interface of the edge device that you want to connect to the logical switch. Click Next.
Here, we want to enter a IP address for the interface connecting to the logical switch. Also determine whether the connection to the logical switch will be a uplink or a internal interface. Click Next.
Click Finish.
Deploy services on a Logical Switch
I’m not sure about this one. I’m running 6.3.3 in my lab so maybe this option was in 6.2, but from the VMware administration guide here are the steps:
Connect/Disconnect virtual machines to/from a Logical Switch
Right click the logical switch and select Add VM
Select the VM that you want to connect to the logical switch. Click Next.
Select the vNIC of the VM that you want to connect to the logical switch. Click Next
Click Finish
Test Logical Switch connectivity
You can do a ping test to check if two ESXi hosts VXLAN transport network has connectivity between each other. This can be done in the Networking & Security GUI. Navigate to Networking & Security > Logical Switches and double click one of your logical switches
Under the Monitor tab, you will see Ping testing. Just identify your source host and destination host. Leave the size of the test packet as VXLAN standard and start the test. After a moment, the results should show
