Man….let me tell ya….I’m so happy to say that the “Road to VCAP6-NV” is complete! I passed my exam at VMworld 2018! Back in Oct 2017, I began my “Road to VCAP6-NV” series with the intent of giving myself a reference point to take my notes as I studied for the exam and also something that could be useful to the community. Well that work paid off!
Skills and Abilities
Universal logical switches can only be created from the primary NSX manager and when connected to a universal transport zone.
To create a universal logical switch, navigate to Networking & Security > Logical Switches. Click the green “+”. Enter a name for the logical switch. Click Change next to Transport Zone.
In a Cross-vCenter NSX deployment, the NSX Manager can have one of four different roles:
The primary role can only be given to one NSX Manager. The primary manager has the controllers installed and all universal objects are created on the primary NSX Manager. The secondary NSX Manager becomes secondary when it added to the primary manager. All universal objects are read only on the secondary NSX Manager. The secondary NSX Manager cannot have it’s own controllers. Each NSX Manager can have its own local objects that are only seen by that NSX environment. The Standalone role is the default role of a newly installed NSX Manager. It is not a part of a cross-vCenter setup. The Transit role comes into play when a once primary or secondary is made standalone again but there are still universal objects that exist. In the transit role, universal objects can only be deleted, not created. Once all universal objects are deleted, the NSX Manager can become a standalone or secondary NSX Manager.
To assign the primary role to a NSX Manager, navigate to Networking & Security > Installation and Upgrade > Management. Select the the NSX Manager and click the Actions wheel and select Assign Primary Role.
Skills and Abilities
• Implement identity service support for Active Directory, NIS, and LDAP with Single Sign-On (SSO)
• Manage User rights:
You can register a Windows domain with NSX Manager and vCenter. The NSX Manager will get the user and group info from Active Directory and that can be used to create identity based security groups and firewall rules and for activity monitoring. To register a Windows domain with NSX Manager, navigate to Networking & Security > System > Users and Domains. I’ve already configured this but in a new instance, click the green “+”.
Skills and Abilities
• Configure logging for NSX components according to a deployment plan
• Monitor health of networking services
• Monitor health and status of infrastructure components:
• Enable data collection for single/multiple virtual machines
To configure logging for our ESXi host, navigate to the host and click Configure > Advanced System Settings. You can click Edit and search for syslog. Edit the settings for Syslog.global.logHost and enter in your syslog server’s FQDN or IP and port number.
Over the past several months, I have really taken a interest in…..THE CLOUD!
With all the talks about automation this and automation that…I figured it was about time for me to jump on board and start learning. More and more these days, businesses are taking advantage of a hybrid cloud model for their data center.
I’ve always liked to position myself to be valuable and with the rapid speed that NSX and vRealize Automation are going forward with, I needed to stay on top of both products. So taking advantage of the resources in my homelab, I deployed a vRealize Automation environment and integrated NSX with it to begin my studies about the product. Let me start by saying that vRA is MASSIVE. The possibilities really are endless with what you can do with it. One thing I found out soon in my studies was that there really aren’t a lot of good books on vRA 7. The best one that I found also came with the best price….FREE! As a wonderful service to the community, Jen Soldner, Dr. Guido Soeldner, and Dr. Constantin Soeldner created a online copy of the Mastering vRealize Automation 7.1 book that they wrote. This, along with the Eric Shanks’ PluralSight course, got me to a good start at learning the product.
So after months of reading, breaking and fixing the product in my lab, and some late nights studying….I’m proud to say that I passed the VCP6-CMA exam at VMworld US 2017. Now on to the next cert…I’m thinking VCAP6-NV Deploy or AWS. Who knows….maybe both!
Let's v4Real 