What is VMware NSX-T Manager Unified Appliance and Installation
![What-is-VMware-NSX-T-Manager-Unified-Appliance-and-Installation](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/What-is-VMware-NSX-T-Manager-Unified-Appliance-and-Installation.png)
Highlights
- NSX-T certainly seems to be the direction that VMware will be heading with the NSX product roadmap and certainly could be a merge of the two in the future.
- As mentioned and shown in the table above, the deployment configuration allows choosing the size of the appliance in regards to resources allocated to the resulting VM.
- In this post, we will take a look at the first core component of the VMware NSX-T installation – the NSX-T Manager.
Recently, I have been doing a lot of NSX labbing in the home lab environment, between NSX-V and starting to lab with NSX-T as well. NSX-T certainly seems to be the direction that VMware will be heading with the NSX product roadmap and certainly could be a merge of the two in the future. However, for now, they are separate products. NSX-T is a multi-hypervisor product that does not require vCenter Server, unlike NSX-V. NSX-V is the VMware only variant of the product. There are definitely similarities between the two, but also differences. In this post, we will take a look at the first core component of the VMware NSX-T installation – the NSX-T Manager. Let’s look at what is VMware NSX-T Manager Unified Appliance and installation to discuss the unified appliance, its purpose, and also installing the NSX-T Manager appliance.
What is VMware NSX-T Manager Unified Appliance?
Unlike downloading NSX-V, when you go to download NSX-T from VMware, you will see the NSX-T Data Center Unified Appliance available for download. What is this exactly?
The NSX-T Data Center Unified Appliance is an appliance included in the installation of NSX-T. It includes the ability to deploy the appliance in the roles of NSX Manager, Policy Manager, or Cloud Service Manager. At this time, it only supports one role at a time.
Installing VMware NSX-T Manager appliance
The NSX-T Manager is the first role that you stand up with the NSX-T environment. It provides the graphical user interface and access to REST APIs. This allows creating, configuring, and monitoring NSX-T Data Center. The NSX-T Manager is used to create such components as logical switches and routers as well as firewalls. A couple of things to note about the NSX-T Manager:
- It provides the management plane of the NSX-T solution
- You can only have one instance of NSX-T manager running.
- If in vSphere, you can use vSphere HA to ensure availability of the NSX-T Manager
In this walk through, we will be installing the NSX-T Unified Appliance in the role of NSX Manager. The particular role you want the NSX-T Manager to fulfill is determined during the customization of the template during the OVA appliance deployment process. What are the requirements of the Unified appliance? ***Note*** The small VM should only be used in lab and proof-of-concept implementations. This is a great size for home lab and what I am using.
Appliance | Memory | vCPU | Storage | VM Hardware Version |
NSX Manager Small VM | 8 GB | 2 | 200 GB | 10 or later |
NSX Manager Medium VM | 16 GB | 4 | 201 GB | 11 or later |
NSX Manager Medium Large VM | 24 GB | 6 | 202 GB | 12 or later |
NSX Manager Large VM | 32 GB | 8 | 203 GB | 13 or later |
NSX Manager Extra Large VM | 48 GB | 12 | 204 GB | 14 or later |
The download file details and size that I am using at the time of this writing:
- nsx-unified-appliance-2.3.1.0.0.11294305.ova
- Size 6,252,160 KB
The NSX-T unified appliance deployment is a standard OVA appliance deployment with the usual screens. Here, we are simply selecting the appliance.
![Begin-the-VMware-NSX-T-Unified-Appliance-deployment-by-choosing-the-OVA-file](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Begin-the-VMware-NSX-T-Unified-Appliance-deployment-by-choosing-the-OVA-file.png)
Choose the name and folder for the NSX-T unified appliance.
![Choose-the-name-and-folder-of-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Choose-the-name-and-folder-of-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance.png)
Choose the compute resource you want to use for the NSX-T unified appliance.
![Select-the-compute-resource-for-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Select-the-compute-resource-for-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance.png)
On the Review details screen, you can see the Size on disk if you thin or thick provision the appliance.
![Review-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance-OVA-deployment-details](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Review-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance-OVA-deployment-details.png)
As mentioned and shown in the table above, the deployment configuration allows choosing the size of the appliance in regards to resources allocated to the resulting VM. Since I am running in a lab environment, I am choosing the Small deployment size for sake of resources in the home lab.
![Select-the-deployment-configuration-size-of-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Select-the-deployment-configuration-size-of-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance.png)
Choose the storage for the NSX-T unified appliance.
![Choose-the-storage-destination-for-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Choose-the-storage-destination-for-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance.png)
Configure the network port group it will connect to.
![Select-the-network-to-attach-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Select-the-network-to-attach-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance.png)
On the Customize template screen contains the configuration for setting passwords across the board. This include the root account and CLI admin credentials.
![Customize-template-configuring-the-user-accounts-and-passwords-for-NSX-T-unified-appliance](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Customize-template-configuring-the-user-accounts-and-passwords-for-NSX-T-unified-appliance.png)
On step 8, Customize Template, one of the configuration options is Rolename. This is the important drop down where you actually choose the role of the unified appliance. At this point, I will refer to it as the NSX-T Manager, since that is what I am selecting.
![Configure-the-rolename-of-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Configure-the-rolename-of-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance.png)
The NSX-T Manager is not ready to deploy with the configured settings.
![Ready-to-complete-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance-deployment-as-an-NSX-T-Manager](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Ready-to-complete-the-NSX-T-unified-appliance-deployment-as-an-NSX-T-Manager.png)
After the NSX-T Manager deployment is complete, you should eventually be able to hit the web interface and login with the password configured during the deployment process. ***Note*** You will have to accept the EULA and make a choice in joining the VMware CEIP program after logging in.
![NSX-T-Manager-appliance-deployment-completes-successfully-ready-to-login](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NSX-T-Manager-appliance-deployment-completes-successfully-ready-to-login.png)
The NSX-T Manager interface is beautiful, running the HTML 5 interface through and through. I really like the layout of the appliance as well. you have all the menus on the left hand side that pop out from the side, so it is extremely un-cluttered.
![After-logging-into-the-NSX-T-Manager-dashboard](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/After-logging-into-the-NSX-T-Manager-dashboard.png)
The Dashboard overview of the appliance displays all the pertinent information about the NSX-T environment.
![NSX-T-Manager-Dashboard-Overview](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NSX-T-Manager-Dashboard-Overview.png)
The Getting Started dashboard is a great place to start with NSX-T. This page basically steps you through next steps in deployment of the NSX-T solution.
![NSX-T-Manager-Getting-Started-dashboard](https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NSX-T-Manager-Getting-Started-dashboard.png)
Final Thoughts
The NSX-T unified appliance is the all-in-one appliance that allows the ability to deploy multiple NSX-T components from one OVA appliance. These include the NSX Manager, Policy Manager, and Cloud Service Manager. As show in the post What is VMware NSX-T Manager Unified Appliance and Installation, the installation process is very straightforward and easy to work your way through. Next, we will look at preparing ESXi hosts with NSX-T and NSX-T controller deployment.