Changing the form factor of NSX Manager in a VCF environment

Products

• VMware NSX
• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

This article provides guidance on how to changing the size(form factor) of the NSX Manager appliance in a VCF environment.

Environment

VMware NSX
VMware SDDC

Resolution

Changing the form factor of an NSX Manager cannot be performed from the SDDC Manager.

Small, Medium, Large Form Factor

Form factor changes involving Small, Medium or Large, can be made without redeploying the appliance.

1. On the NSX UI go to System -> Appliances -> NSX Appliances, cluster should be stable
2. On vSphere Client do a shutdown of Manager 1
3. Edit settings of the VM and change the Memory and CPU 
   Medium: 6 vCPUs, 24GB Memory
   Large:     12 vCPUs, 48GB Memory
   
   Note: The new NSX Manager resources configuration must match one of the the supported standard form factor configuration (Small, Medium or Large).
    
4. Power on Manager 1
5. On the UI, System -> Appliances -> NSX Appliances, wait for the cluster to go back to Stable status before proceeding
6. Repeat steps 1-5 for Manager 2
7. Repeat steps 1-5 for Manager 3
8. No update is needed on the SDDC Manager

Extra Large(XL) Form Factor

Form factor changes involving XL, require the NSX Manager appliance to be redeployed. For XL it is not supported to manually edit the CPU and Memory.
See the NSX Admin Guide for the steps, Resize an NSX Manager Node.
Follow option 2 for autodeployed Edges and option 3 for ovf deployed Managers.
OVF deployed managers will be identifiable by the delete option being greyed out when navigating to System > Appliances > Actions on the NSX GUI.
Post Manager replacement, SDDC Manager will detect the SSL certificates of the new NSX nodes have changed, and will prompt to re-trust the NSX Managers.
Click to accept and SDDC Manager will re-establish communication with the new NSX Managers.

After an increase in form factor, the NSX Manager configuration and capacity maximums will automatically increase to correspond to the larger form factor.

Additional Information

NSX Admin Guide: NSX Manager sizing