Previously we installed the vSphere infra, and the NSX Manager. Now we will install the NSX control plane.

Let's continue...

NSX Control Plane

We will now deploy the NSX Control Cluster. The control cluster will be 3 x VMs deployed by the NSX manager onto the Edge cluster.

IP Pool

First, we will create an IP Pool within the Groups and Tags section of Network and Security.
image5-2
Figure 1 : IP pool creation

Deploy

Within Network and Security / Installation and Upgrade goto NSX Controller Nodes and Add 3 NSX Controllers using the IP Pool previously created.

Verify

Once the Controller Cluster is installed, verify via logging into one of the controller node IPs, and run the following command.

nsx-controller # show control-cluster status
Type                Status                                       Since
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join status:        Join complete                                10/11 21:30:16
Majority status:    Connected to cluster majority                10/11 21:29:58
Restart status:     This controller can be safely restarted      10/11 21:17:07
Cluster ID:         881c95c3-f3fe-4d86-82db-73b17bd52d09
Node UUID:          881c95c3-f3fe-4d86-82db-73b17bd52d09
Role                Configured status   Active status
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
api_provider        enabled             activated
persistence_server  enabled             activated
switch_manager      enabled             activated
logical_manager     enabled             activated
directory_server    enabled             activated

In addition, you should also see the following statuses via vCenter.
image13
Figure 2 : NSX controller deployment verfication.

What's Next?

Next, in this series, we will deploy the data plane, aka VXLAN VTEPs across the ESXi hosts.

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