NSX-T Edge TEP networking options

Products

• VMware NSX
• VMware NSX-T Data Center

Issue/Introduction

This article explains the environmental configurations that determine if the NSX-T Edge TEP and the ESXi TEP can be on the same network.

Note: Invalid configuration may result in BFD tunnels going down between Edges and Hosts while Host to Host and Edge to Edges remain up. Alarm - "Edge tunnels down" . 

Environment

VMware NSX-T Data Center
VMware NSX

Resolution

Edge TEP and ESXi host TEP can be configured on the same VLAN in the following configurations:

 - Edge VM TEP interface connected to a vDS portgroup on an ESXi host not prepared for NSX
 - Edge VM TEP interface connected to a vDS portgroup on a switch not used by NSX, on an ESXi host prepared for NSX
 - Edge VM TEP interface connected to a logical switch/segment on a vDS7 with NSX-T 3.1.0 or above and is on a host prepared for NSX
 - Edge VM TEP interface connected to a logical switch/segment on a NVDS with NSX-T 3.1.0 or above and is on a host prepared for NSX


Edge TEP and ESXi host TEP must be on separate VLANs in the following configurations:

 - Edge VM TEP interface connected to a vDS portgroup where that vDS is used by NSX-T
 - Edge VM TEP interface connected to a logical switch/segment on vDS/NVDS prior to NSX-T 3.1.0

Additional Information

If using a VLAN segment on an NSX prepared VDS, adding only a single VLAN to the segment will result in the segment processing traffic for that VLAN only and stripping the tag for ingress traffic and adding the tag for egress traffic. This will result in the edge TEPs being unable to communicate as they require a trunked segment. This can be achieved by applying a range to the VLAN value (inclusive of your required VLAN) .