Hello, and welcome to what will probably be a series of posts about a topic that is way over my head. Hopefully this exercise will make me a bit better in what seems to be a weak point for me. Networking and Security.

VMware NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC).

Today, we’ll be simply deploying the appliance, and configuring the vCenter in the appliance. This is a very non-technical procedure, but who knows. Someone may find it useful. Let’s get started.

First thing I did was to launch vCenter, and Deploy OVF Template. I pointed the wizard at the NSX manager I downloaded from my.vmware.com.

From there, you’ll see the details of the OVF. Including the verified VMware publisher.

Next, you’ll need to accept the EULA. Make sure you read and understand all of it. It’s a binding contract.

Name the VM and select the folder within your vCenter structure.

Select the cluster.

Select which datastore or DS cluster you wish to put the NSX Manager VM on.

I selected Thin Provisioning by default.

Tell the wizard which portgroup you wish to put the NSX Manager VM on. I have mine on Network Services.

The next page you will setup your passwords for the appliance. You’ll also setup the IP / DNS info.

Verify on the next page that all of your information is correct, before you deploy.

You should now see the deployment task in vCenter.

Voila! We have now deployed the NSX Manager appliance. Now let’s tie it to vCenter.

Login with the Admin user, and your default password that you specified during the OVF deployment.

Once inside the NSX Manager console, we’ll want to go to Manage vCenter Registration.

From here, we have a pair of settings we need to configure. The Lookup Service for SSO registration, and the vCenter Connection. Lookup service will be the IP of vCenter (or external PSC / SSO), the default port of 7444 (unless changed) and your SSO admin credentials.

The vCenter Server info is the DNS name, admin user, and password used to access vCenter.

Accept any certificate warnings.

Now we’re all setup! We have two Green LED’s on the sections we need. Perfect!

This is a shot of the home screen of the NSX Manager appliance portal. Shows resource usage, and service status.

Now, if we login to the vCenter Web Client (Can’t access NSX from C# client) we see the NSX Networking & Security icon.

There you have it. It’s extremely straight-forward to deploy and link the NSX Manager to vCenter.

Stay tuned for more on VMware NSX. The next blog should be on basic host-prep and service deployment. I’ll be deploying it for use in my vSphere home lab, as well as integration into VMware Horizon View.

-vTimD