Converting VMware NSX global objects to local objects when decommissioning a Global Manager

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• You have an NSX Federation setup with two local sites and one Global Manager, and you want to offboard the Local Managers and decommission the Global Manager to keep the two local sites as standalone environments.
• During the initial onboarding process, all local configurations were imported to the Global Manager. As a result, all network objects, including Tier-0 (T0) gateways, Tier-1 (T1) gateways, and segments, are now marked with a Global tag in the product UI.

Cause

The Global Manager permanently owns any Local Manager objects that were imported into it. These objects appear in the Local Manager UI with a specific GM icon, and you can only modify these objects from the Global Manager. There is no direct, supported method to convert global objects back into local objects.

Resolution

To transition your local sites back to standalone environments, you must manually recreate the routing and switching topology locally.

1. Recreate all required network objects (Tier-0 gateways, Tier-1 gateways, segments, etc.) locally on each respective Local Manager. Preferably with new NSX Edge cluster.

2. Migrate your workloads from the existing global network objects to the newly created local network objects.

3. From the Global Manager, delete all objects created from the Global Manager that are specific to the location you are preparing to offboard (such as Tier-0 gateways or firewall policies).

4. Once all location-specific global objects are deleted, remove the location from the Global Manager.

Additional Information

Importing Configurations from Local Manager: "Global Manager owns any Local Manager objects imported into the Global Manager. These objects appear in the Local Manager with this icon: GM icon. You can only modify these objects from the Global Manager now."