NSX-T Edge VM Hardware Version upgrade

Products

VMware NSX VMware NSX-T Data Center

Issue/Introduction

This article has been created to describe all the steps and conditions for upgrading the hardware version for Edge VMs

Prior to NSX-T 4.0.1, Edge VM was deployed with Hardware version 13 irrespective of ESXi/vSphere version it was deployed on.
Starting from NSX 4.0.1, there is additional feature support which requires upgrade of the Edge HW version.
Upgraded HW version is a requirement for running SmartNIC-enabled Edge. SmartNIC requires a minimum version combination of vSphere 8.0, NSX-T 4.0.1 and Edge Hardware Version 20.
During Upgrade to NSX-T 4.0.1 and above, only NSX Managed Edges/ Auto-deployed Edge VM's Hardware version will be updated by Upgrade coordinator (UC) if it's deployed On ESXi/vSphere version 8.0.0 and above.

Environment

VMware NSX-T Data Center
VMware NSX

Resolution

There are now a number of possible Edge VM HW versions and they are determined by the ESXi Host version where the Edge VM is running.

ESX version	Edge Hardware Version
ESXi 7.0	HW version 17
ESXi 7.0 U1	HW version 18
ESXi 7.0 U2/U3	HW version 19
ESXi 8.0	HW version 20
ESXi 8.0.2	HW version 21
ESX 9.0	HW version 22

It is recommended to upgrade the vSphere ESXi environment first before upgrading NSX. However, before upgrading vSphere environment check if the version of ESXi and vCenter are compatible with the current version of NSX (Please refer to link: Product Interoperability Matrix).
Since Edge HW version is determined from the ESXi version, it is important to ensure that all versions of ESXi in a vSphere cluster are the same version. Heterogenous vSphere clusters may cause problems during DRS/vMotion since vMotion may fail due to HW version incompatibility. VMware does not recommend running NSX Edge VMs in a heterogeneous vSphere clusters.

Auto-Deployed Edges

Greenfield: NSX-T Edge node auto-deployed, from NSX-T Manager API/UI, will automatically deploy the Edge VM with a HW version according to the version of ESXi above.
Upgrade: From 4.1.0, Upgrade Coordinator supports update of hardware version for auto deployed Edge nodes during upgrade, only if the from version is 3.2.0 or higher and if deployed on ESXi host version 8.0.
Hardware version of Edge virtual machine is updated to the max hardware version supported by the underlying VMware vSphere ESXi.
For other versions existing auto-deployed Edges, will continue to have the same HW version. If an Edge VM is redeployed, it will automatically be deployed with an upgraded HW version matching the vSphere version.
Reference: Redeploy an NSX Edge VM Appliance

Manually deployed Edges

Greenfield: NSX-T Edge nodes manually deployed, through OVA, will require the administrator to set the HW version at deployment time.
Upgrade: Edge VMs which were originally manually deployed from ovf will remain at HW version 13. New Edges will need to be deployed, specifying the higher HW version at deployment time.
The replace option can then be used to replace the older harder version Edges
Reference: Replace an NSX Edge Transport Node