VCIX-NV Objective 2.2 – Configure and Manage Layer 2 Bridging

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Underneath todays objective we have the following topics:

  • Add Layer 2 Bridging
  • Connect Layer 2 Bridging to the appropriate distributed virtual port group

So first let’s do a little background on what we are doing and more importantly the why. Layer 2 bridging in this case, is an ability we have in NSX to take a workload that currently only exists in our NSX world and “bridge” that with the outside world. We could use this to reach a physical server being used as a proxy or gateway for example. We create this bridge between a logical switch inside NSX and it routes out to a VLAN. I am going to borrow the picture from the NSX guide to try to simplify it a bit more. (credit to VMware for the pic)

In the above picture you have the NSX VXLAN 5001 that is running our workload inside ESXi. We have a need to communicate to a physical workload labeled as such. In order to do that, we have an NSX Edge logical router that has L2 bridging enabled on it. The Bridging tab itself will allow us to choose a logical switch and distributed port group that will be connected together. To do this here are the following steps:

  1. If you don’t already have one, you will need to deploy a new Logical Router. To do that, you will need to go to the NSX Edges subsection of the Networking and Security screen of NSX.
  2. Click on the green + icon on the middle pane
  3. The first information you will need to fill out will be Install Type, and Name. The rest of the options we won’t go over in this walkthrough.
  4. We will need to select Logical Router as the Install Type and then type in a name.
  5. On the next screen, we will need to input a password for the Edge device.
  6. On the Configure Deployment Screen, we will need to add an actual appliance here by clicking on the green + icon.
  7. This popups with a screen for us to select where we wish to place the device’s compute and storage resources.
  8. On the Configure Interfaces screen, I’ve chosen to connect it to my management network. You don’t really need to configure an interface as the actual bridging work will be done by a different mechanism.
  9. You can click past the Default Gateway screen.
  10. Click Finish on the Ready to Complete screen and away you go.

Now the actual bridging mechanism is found by going into the Edge itself

  1. Double click on the Edge device you are going to use for bridging.
  2. Click on Manage, then on Bridging tabs in the center pane.
  3. To add a bridge, click on the green + arrow
  4. Give the Bridge a name, select the Logical Switch you are bridging, and the VLAN Port Group you will be bridging to. (Just as a side note, none of the normal dv Port Groups will show up unless you have a VLAN assigned to them. Something I discovered while writing this )
  5. Once you click Ok, you will exit out to the Bridging screen again, and you will now need to publish your changes to make it work.
  6. Once published, you will have a Bridging ID
  7. You can have more than one Bridge using the same Edge device, but they won’t be able to bridge the same networks. In otherwords you can’t use a bridge to connect the same VXLAN to two different VLAN Port Groups.

And that covers this objective. Stay tuned for the next objective!

Mike

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