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Monday 16 May 2016

NSX 6.2 Central CLI MindMap

For those of you not familiar with the Central CLI feature available in NSX 6.2 it allows you to troubleshoot your environment from a single interface rather than having to connect to multiple systems such as NSX Manager, Hosts, Edges and Controllers.  I'm going to be doing some work for the VMware Hands On Labs so I figured I'd create a MindMap of all the Central CLI commands that are available:


The commands were taken from an installation of NSX 6.2.2 so depending on your version they may have changed.  You can download a .jpg version of the MindMap from here

Tuesday 3 May 2016

New NSX Editions (Standard | Advanced | Enterprise)

NSX has three primary use cases that we focus on when talking to customers:

Security
Microsegmentation
DMZ Anywhere
Secure User Environments

Automation
IT Automating IT
Developer Cloud
Multi-tenant Cloud

Application Continuity
Disaster Recovery
Metro Pooling
Hybrid Cloud Networking

I have worked with customers who have only had a requirement for the security use case for specific projects such as securing virtual desktop environments and others who have deployed the entire SDDC stack for a developer cloud environment with security and disaster recovery.  Previously NSX was only available in a single edition which provided all functionality irrespective of the customer utilising or requiring that functionality.

As of the 3rd May 2016 NSX is now available in three editions that align the functionality to the primary use cases that are mentioned above.  The following image depicts the new editions available and what functionality they provide:


I feel this is a tremendous step forward as the majority of objections that I receive from customers is around cost of the full license when their only requirement is security.  NSX also requires the vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) which only comes as part of Enterprise Plus licensing.  If you are running vSphere 5.5 U3 or vSphere 6.0 onwards then the the vDS license comes with NSX so there is no longer a requirement for Enterprise Plus licensing from an NSX perspective.  This KB article explains the licensing requirements for NSX.

For existing customer who have already purchased NSX you will automatically be upgraded to the Enterprise edition which unlocks all functionality.