This is the first revision of the VMware® NSX-T Reference design and is aimed to deliver an architectural baseline.
Authors: VMware NSX Technical Product Management Team
Readers can expect technical details around deep packet walks for layer 2 & 3, security capabilities, and overall architecture design (ex. the design considerations for ESXi and KVM based environments). The design chapter uses previously well adopted and understood design practices of NSX for vSphere architecture; however, NSX-T does not assume familiarity with NSX for vSphere and we treat knowledge of the platform independently. Additionally, the design document covers the deployment guidelines of the bare metal edge node, as well as cluster design covering multi-VC ESXi deployment (including KVM only design). As more customers deploy the NSX-T architecture and as new features get introduced to the platform, we will continue to update the document (for example, NSX-T 2.1 release supports load balancer functionality) to provide design guidance.
In addition to the design guide, we are also sharing a container whitepaper covering the container related ecosystem from a technical standpoint, where we discuss a majority of the various offerings in this space – our goal is to provide guidance and education for any networking and security reader to get familiar with overall landscape, and then through that lens, understand the need for the development of NSX Container Plugin (NCP)
Feedback and Comments to the Authors and the NSX Solution Team are highly appreciated. Happy Reading.
--The VMware NSX Product Management