NSX-T 2.0 – Deploying NSX Controller

NSX controllers controls virtual networks and overlay transport tunnels. NSX Controllers are deployed as a cluster of highly available vApps that are responsible for the automated deployment of virtual networks across the entire NSX-T architecture and to achieve high availability of control plane the NSX Controllers are deployed in a cluster of three instances.

Deploying the NSX Controller is almost similar to deploying the NSX Manager appliance. I’ve deployed one NSX Controllers onto the same network as the NSX Manager.

Let’s Start Deploying Controller:

1 – First login to ESXi using HTML5 Client and run the New Virtual Machine wizard and select “Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file”

2 – Enter the name for the NSX-T Controller appliance (nsxc.avnlab.com) and choose NSX-T controller appliance OVA (nsx-controller-2.0.0.0.0.6522091.ova)

3 – Choose your storage

4 – Choose your Network and disk type

5 – Enter various password for “Root User” , “admin User” and “audit User” , we need to setup a complex password.Password complexity requirements are as below:

At least eight characters
At least one lower-case letter
At least one upper-case letter
At least one digit
At least one special character
At least five different characters
No dictionary words
No palindromes

6 – in the same window Enter the “Host Name”, Default Gateway, IP address and Other network related information.

7 – Review the configuration and click Finish

8 – it will take some time and once ova import completes , you are done.

Validate Controller Network Configuration as below:

Connect Controller Cluster to NSX Manager

Get NSX Manager API thumbprint

Log onto the NSX Manager via SSH using the admin credentials.
Use “get certificate api thumbprint” to get the SSL certificate thumbprint. Copy the output to use later

Join NSX Controller to NSX Manager

Log on to the NSX Controllers via SSH using the admin credentials.
Use “join management-plane <NSX Manager> username admin thumbprint <API Thumbprint>“
command will prompt for “admin” password.
Once entered , wait for some time , if all goes well then you will see below “successful” message .
Enter command on NSX Controller as “get managers” to view the connection to Manager
On NSX manager run command “get nodes” to view registration is successful..
From the command line using command “get management-cluster status ” you can see the details and their status – Controllers is listed in the control cluster, but the cluster status is “UNSTABLE”.

Configure the Controller Cluster:

To configure the Controller cluster you need to log on to any of the Controllers and initialise the cluster. Since this i am deploying in my Home Lab and have a single cluster , so let’s login to Controller and initialize the the cluster.

Log onto the Controller node via SSH using the admin credentials.
Use “set control-cluster security-model shared-secret” to configure the shared secret
after the secret is configured, use “initialize control-cluster” to promote this node as Master controller
Now , if you see “Control Cluster Status” is “Stable”
you can also view in GUI console also..