Navigating NSX Module in PowerCLI 12.6

With the release of PowerCLI 12.6, a new module VMware.Sdk.Nsx.Policy was added to provide PowerShell binding for NSX Policy Manager APIs. This new module is auto generated from the NSX Policy API spec exposing all the features related to policy objects in NSX. The module also exposes cmdlets to Create/Edit/Delete NSX objects. This blog explains the use of PowerCLI NSX module, goes through all the different ways new cmdlets can be found and shows how to view documentation on the cmdlets with examples.

Navigating the new cmdlets

Along with the cmdlets to connect, disconnect and modify the NSX objects, there are a few helper cmdlets that make looking up new relevant cmdlets very easy.

The first one is Get-NsxOperation. This is a new feature in VMware.Sdk.Nsx.Policy and is ideal with you need to find the PowerCLI command that corresponds to an API operation and vice versa. You can also narrow down the search result using Where-Object and Select-Object filters.

Example:

Get-NsxOperation -Method GET -Path '/infra/segments'

Since the cmdlets by default returns all paths that start with /infra/segments you can also limit the search to exact match with client-side filter:

Get-NsxOperation -Method get  Continue reading

Connect and Secure your Apps with Antrea and VMware NSX-T 3.2

The release of VMware NSX-T 3.2 and VMware Container Networking with Antrea 1.3.1-1.2.3 delivers on VMware’s vision to have heterogeneous Antrea clusters running anywhere integrate with NSX-T for centralized container policy management and visibility.

NSX-T becomes the single pane of glass for policy management when connected to Antrea clusters. The Antrea clusters could be running on VMware Tanzu platform, RedHat OpenShift or any upstream Kubernetes cluster. Inventory management, tagging, dynamic grouping and troubleshooting can be extended to Antrea clusters along with native Kubernetes network policies and Antrea network policies to be centrally managed by NSX-T.

Integrating Antrea to NSX-T

Antrea to NSX-T interworking Architecture

Antrea NSX Adapter is a new component introduced to the standard Antrea cluster to make the integration possible. This component communicates with K8s API and Antrea Controller and connects to the NSX-T APIs. When a NSX-T admin defines a new policy via NSX APIs or UI, the policies are replicated to all the clusters as applicable. These policies will be received by the adapter which in turn will create appropriate CRDs using K8s APIs. The Antrea Controller which is watching these policies run the relevant computation and sends the results Continue reading

How to Navigate NSX-T Policy APIs for Network Automation

According to the Gartner blog post, 2019 Network Resolution: Invest in Network Automation, the top network resolution of 2019 was network automation. This isn’t surprising since traditional automation of networking and security has always been a challenge due to the cumbersome processes, lack of governance, and limited or non-existent management tools.

Organizations that automate more than 70% of their network change activities will reduce the number of outages by at least 50% and deliver services to their business constituents 50% faster

VMware NSX-T Data Center solves this by enabling rapid provisioning of network and security resources with layered security and governance. By using various network automation tools, you can quickly and effectively keep up with the demands of your developers and application owners who expect a quick turnaround on resource requests. In this blog post we’ll look at how NSX-T Policy APIs simplifies network automation.

What Are NSX-T Policy APIs?

At the center of NSX network automation lies the single point of entry into NSX via REST APIs. Just like traditional REST APIs, NSX-T APIs support the following API verbs: GET, PATCH, POST, PUT, DELETE. The table below shows the usage:

A New API Object Model

Introduced in Continue reading

NSX-T Infrastructure Deployment Using Ansible

VMware NSX-T Data Center 2.4 was a major release adding new functionality for virtualized network and security for public, private and hybrid clouds. The release includes a rich set of features including IPv6 support, context-aware firewall, network introspection features, a new intent-based networking user interface and many more.

Along with these features, another important infrastructure change is the ability to deploy highly-available clustered management and control plane.

What is the Highly-Available Cluster?

The highly-avilable cluster consists of three NSX nodes where each node contains the management plane and control plane services. The three nodes form a cluster to give a highly-available management plane and control plane. It provides application programming interface (API) and graphical user interface (GUI) for clients. It can be accessed from any of the manager or a single VIP associated with the cluster. The VIP can be provided by NSX or can be created using an external Load Balancer. It makes operations easier with less systems to monitor, maintain and upgrade.

Besides a NSX cluster, you will have to create Transport Zones, Host and Edge Transport Nodes to consume NSX-T Data Center.

• A Transport Zone defines the scope of hosts and virtual machines (VMs) for participation Continue reading