Intro
One of the cool features that came with the new version of NSX-T Federation is the ability to import existing objects and policies into the Global Manager and thus change them from Local objects to Global objects which means they are then managed and configured from the Global NSX-T manager.
This saves time as you won’t need to re-create things like Tier-0 and Tier-1 gateways. You do of course need to pay attention to what it imports which is an all or nothing deal.
Importing
To import objects its a one time affair once its been run you can’t run it again. To start the import you must have added a local NSX-T manager to the Global Manager, also make sure you have done a recent backup then login to the Global NSX-T Manager and navigate to System, Location Manager here you will see a prompt to Import local objects if you have any. To proceed click Import
A quick note that note all Local Manager objects can be imported for example if your existing deployment has Bridging configured then you cannot import ANY local objects into the Global Manager! That’s right if there are any incompatible objects it will prevent you from importing anything and you will see an alert. The example below is of an L2 Bridge on the local manager.
Run a backup if you don’t have a recent one then click PROCEED TO IMPORT
You’ll see a summary of the objects that will be imported and any conflicts that may be present. You also have the option to add a prefix/suffix to the objects below you can see that I added the prefix DC-AB- hence any objects I import will start with the name DC-AB- Click NEXT
A final review now click IMPORT
The import will start and you will see a progress bar
Once complete we get the green message of success.
If I take a look at my Tier-0 that was a local object called Tier-0 we can see it’s now a global Tier-0 called DC-AB-Tier-0. We can also see that the current Locations shows the DCA which is where we imported it from. To make this Tier-0 span all sites we would need to edit it and add it to the other locations and their Edge clusters and then configure the uplinks etc.
This is a pretty quick post but I just wanted to show a brief overview of this new feature.