Intro
Welcome to Part 9 of the NSX-V Lab Series. In the previous post, we covered configuring the VXLAN parameters and installing the VTEPs on our hosts.
In this post we will configure our Segment ID’s and make our NSX manager the primary manager ready for our dual site configuration.
Segment ID
Put simply a segment ID is a number assigned to each logical switch that we create in our NSX environment the range we set determines the maximum number of logical switches that we can create.
Segment ID’s are VXLAN Network Identifiers (VNI) to relate it to VLAN’s a segment ID is just like a VLAN ID only we can have up to 16 million of them.
The Build
Segment IDs are configure under ‘Installation and Upgrade’ and then the ‘Logical Network Settings’ tab.
For a standalone i.e. single site deployment we only need to set the normal Segment ID pool. however as we are deploying a dual site configuration we will also need to configure the Universal Segment ID Pool.
Universal in NSX means anything that is replicated and used across sites.
However as you can see from the screenshot we can only currently configure the Segment ID Pool. Universal does not show yet.
Why? Well that’s because we haven’t changed our NSX Manager role to primary yet.
In a cross site NSX deployment there is always only 1 Primary NSX manager paired with one or more Secondary NSX Managers so we first need to set our NSX Manager to primary.
In order to change the NSX Managers role go across to the ‘Management’ Tab select the NSX Manager if you have more than one and click on ‘ACTIONS’ and then select ‘Assign Primary Role’
An NSX manager can have 4 roles, Primary, Seconday, Standalone which is the default and Transit which is a role used when moving from one role to another.
Click ‘Yes’
The NSX Manager will now show as Primary
if we now switch back to our ‘Logical Network Settings’ Tab we will also see our Universal Segment ID Pool.
We are now able to configure our ID pool ranges. Before doing so you must plan out how large the range needs to be based on the total number of logical switches you plan to deploy throughout the life of the environment.
You must also ensure that the Segment ID Pool in each site is unique to each site DO NOT have overlapping Segment ID Pools.
The Segment ID Pool is used by the global transport zone and logical switches and is local only to the site and set on each site but the ID’s should not overlap!
The Universal Segment ID is used cross site and is only set on the primary NSX Manager.
Typically for a cross site deployment the Universal Segment ID pool will be larger than the Global Segment ID pool but not always.
In any case you have 16 million ID’s to use so there should be no reason to overlap them.
We won’t be using Multicast addressing so this can be left off.
Set the desired ranges and click ‘SAVE’
Thats it we are done with Segment ID’s for now. We will come back to them in the very next post when we configure our secondary NSX Manager.
NSX-V Lab Part:10 NSX-V Secondary NSX Manager Configuration