Site-to-Site VPN between NSX-T and Azure VMware Solution – Part 1

Shahrouz

When it comes to connecting an on-premises VMware environment to Azure VMware Solution(AVS), ExpressRoute is the recommended & preferred connectivity method. But in some cases using a VPN tunnel is the only viable connectivity solution to AVS environment.

NSX-T Tier-0 or Tier-1 gateways could be used to connect on-premises VMware environment to AVS. On the Azure side, Virtual WAN(vWAN HUB) will be provide the transit connectivity through a ExpressRoute Gateway into AVS infrastructure. I am going to walk you through the configuration of both NSX-T Tier-1 GW and Azure Virtual WAN to have a complete setup.

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VxRail 2-Node Implementation Considerations (VxRail 7.0.100)

Sadaf

Starting with version 4.7.100, VxRail supports vSAN 2-Node for small and Remote-Office Branch-Office (ROBO) deployments. This solution works best for environments that needs hyperconverged compute and storage with a minimal configuration. VxRail 2-Node consists of two VxRail E560 nodes and a vSAN Witness Appliance. It is recommended to deploy the Witness appliance in another site but in case of lacking another site it can be deployed in the same site as vSAN 2-Node.

There are some considerations and requirements that you need to have it in place before starting the VxRAIL 2-Node implementation.

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AVS Hybrid Networking with NSX-T

Shahrouz

When it come to setting up a hybrid cloud environments, one of the most important topics is networking. It is usually comes down to stretch on-prem network segments to the public cloud environment. This blog post is going to simply describe NSX-T architecture on AVS as the default networking and security stack. If you are new to AVS you can read Introduction to AVS blog post first, and then continue with this article.

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vSphere 7.0 Update 1 is now Globally Available!

Sadaf

vSphere 7.0 introduced by VMware in March 2020 and went to GA in April 2020. Many new features like DRS & vMotion improvement and also Lifecycle Manager has been released. After half a year VMware introduced first major update on vSphere 7 and today this release went into GA. It is now publicly available, you can download it from VMware and take advantage of this latest and greatest release! Here in this blog post I will go through the new features and capabilities

3 Pillars of vSphere 7 Update 1
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Azure VMware Solution goes into GA

Shahrouz

On September 22nd 2020, during Ignite 2020 , Microsoft announced the general availability of next generation of VMware Azure Solution(AVS). If you want to learn about basics of AVS, you can read my previous blog post on Introduction of Azure VMware Solutions. Now AVS is now generally available in four Region at US East, US West, West Europe (Netherlands) and Australia(NSW). AVS also going to be available in Japan East, UK South and South Central US in the near future. You can check the availability of Azure VMware Solution by checking Azure Products by Region page for details.

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Introduction to Azure VMware Solution (AVS)

Shahrouz

Azure VMware Solution (AVS) enables you to run VMware SDDC stack natively on Azure to build-up a hybrid cloud infrastructure. AVS is a VMware validated solution that being delivered by Microsoft on Azure environment. According to Microsoft’s release statement in May 2020, “You can provision a full VMware Cloud Foundation environment on Azure and gain compute and storage elasticity as your business needs change”. Popular scenarios for this solution are datacenter footprint reduction, On-demand datacenter expansion, disaster recovery & business continuity and finally application modernization.

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Configure NSX-T 3.0 RBAC with Native Active Directory Integration

Sadaf

One of the new features which has been added to NSX-T 3.0 is supporting RBAC with Native Active Directory. In previous version of NSX-T we had to use VMware Identity Manager (vIDM) to be able to add users and groups from Active Directory for RBAC purposes. In set posts I have already described how to install and configure vIDM with NSX-T. I still believe configuring RBAC through vIDM has some added value like Multi-Factor Authentication(MFA).

To setup NSX-T Role-based Access Control(RBAC) it’s better to create groups in Active Directory and add users into the group for two reasons. First it’s easier to add a group with couple of users as members rather than assign role to many users in NSX-T. Second, with help of Group Policy you can define a “Restricted Group” and it locks down membership to that group. As a result it provides a layer of security.

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Configure Virtual IP for NSX-T Management Cluster

Shahrouz

Now that we have finalize deploying three managers in NSX-T management cluster we can go ahead and configure a Virtual IP(VIP) on it. We can use NSX-T internal mechanism to set an IP address on the cluster or setup an external load balancer in front of NSX-T managers. Configuring VIP which is recommended by VMware is more simple but using a LB would load balance traffic among NSX-T managers. This is a design question and should be chosen based on requirements and customer needs.

Please keep in mind that if you want to choose this approach, you need to have all NSX-T managers are on the same subnet. In this case, managers are attached to SDDC Management network. To configure Virtual IP, login to NSX-T Manager UI, choose System and on the left panel select Appliances then click on SET VIRTUAL IP option.

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Finalizing NSX-T Management Cluster Deployment

Sadaf

In the previous articles, we deployed first NSX-T Manager and then we added vCenter Server as Compute Manager in NSX-T Web UI. In this post we are going to finalize NSX-T Management cluster. In production environment for high availability and performance reasons, it is recommended to have three NSX-T Managers in the cluster. Second and third NSX-T Managers should be added from NSX-T Web UI. To deploy additional NSX-T manager appliances, go to System menu and choose Appliances and click on “ADD NSX APPLIANCE”.

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Add Compute Manager to NSX-T 3.0

Sadaf

In previous blog post we started NSX-T implementation by deploying first NSX-T Manager. Before deploying other two NSX-T Managers we need to add a Compute Manager. As it defines by VMware, “A Compute Manager is an application that manage resources such as hosts and VMs. One example is vCenter Server”. We do this because other NSX-T Managers will be deployed through Web UI and with help of vCenter Server. We can add up to 16 vCenter Servers in a NSX-T Management cluster.

To add compute manager in NSX-T, It is recommended to create a service account and customized vSphere Role instead of using NSX-T default admin account. The reason behind defining a specific role is because of security reasons. As you can see in the below screen shot I created a vSphere Role call “NSX-T Compute Manager” with the required privileges. I use this Role to assign permission to the service account on vCenter Server.

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