Intro
Welcome to Part 7 of the AVI/ALB Lab In the previous post, we covered the initial configuration of the Avi Controller.
In this post we’ll cover the creation of the NSX-T overlay cloud.
What is a Cloud in AVI?
Clouds are containers for the environment that Avi Vantage is installed or operating within. During initial setup of Avi, a default cloud, named “Default-Cloud”, is created. This is where the first Controller is deployed, into Default-Cloud. Additional clouds may be added, containing SEs and virtual services.
- A cloud is a container for Avi service elements
- SE Groups (and therefore SEs) are always scoped within a cloud
Additionally there are different types of clouds namely:-
Write Access Cloud:
- Controllers manage the full life cycle of Service Engines or other words SE’s are spun up on demand based on the settings of the SE group.
No Access Cloud:
- Administrators are responsible for the life cycle of Service Engines, No automation additional controllers must be manually deployed.
Cloud Configuration
If your not already logged in the go ahead and login then navigate to Infrastructure, Clouds then click CREATE and select NSX-T Cloud
Give the cloud a name, you can’t change the type for obvious reasons 🙂 Select DHCP if the SE Management Segment has DHCP enabled on it. Then enter a prefix string in the Object Name Profile section, this cannot be changed later! Now scroll down or click NSX-T at the top.
Enter the FQDN or IP of the NSX-T Manager then click on the ellipsis and select Create
This will let us create a new user credentials within Avi to connect to the NSX-T Manager, enter a name, then enter the username as it appears in NSX-T then the password and click SAVE
Now click CONNECT
As long as you entered it correctly you should now be able to select the Transport Zone from the dropdown menu, remember this must be the Overlay TZ. Next select the Management T1 and the Management Segment attached to that T1. Logical Segments can only be added manually at the moment which is why the Automatic option is greyed out click ADD then select the relevant T1 and the VIP Segment then scroll down.
Under vCenters Servers click ADD
Enter a name for the vCenter then under vCenter address enter the vCenter FQDN or IP (for me it only works if I use the IP) and again click on the ellipsis next to vCenter Credentials then click Create.
This will let us create a new user credentials within Avi to connect to the vCenter Server, enter a name, then enter the FQDN username then the password and click SAVE
Now click Connect
Now select the Content library from the dropdown and click SAVE
Scroll to the bottom at this stage you can add an IPAM and DNS Profile if you have them setup but I’ll come back and configure these later for now click SAVE
Wait for the Status to turn Green and we are done.
On my lab at least in order for the VIPs to be able to route out of the platform I need to configure a default route for the VIP network. Navigate to Infrastructure, Routing make sure to select the NSX-T Cloud from the dropdown then under Static Route and VRF Context: Tier-1 click CREATE
Enter 0.0.0.0/0 as the Gateway Subnet and then your VIP gateway as the Next Hop and click Save
We now have a default route.
AVI/ALB NSX-T Lab Part 8: – SE Group Configuration