Next up is creating a Transport Zone! Transport Zones are a way to define which clusters/hosts are be able to see and participate in the virtual network that are being configured. Its like a container that houses NSX Logical Switches along with their details which is then assigned to a collection of ESXi hosts that should be able to communicate with each other across the physical network infrastructure.
To configure a transport zone click on the Transport Zones sub-tab, then click the green plus button to add a new transport zone.
- Name – Example transport zone names I have seen in the field are “Management”, “Edge Services”, “Resources”, “Compute”, “CustomerName” etc.
- Description – Little description of the transport zones function (can be left blank like I have)
- Control Plane Mode – The method that VXLAN will use to distribute information across the control plane. Here are the official details as per the NSX Installation Guide:
- Multicast: Multicast IP addresses on physical network is used for the control plane. This mode is recommended only when you are upgrading from older VXLAN deployments. Requires PIM/IGMP on physical network.
- Unicast : The control plane is handled by an NSX controller. All unicast traffic leverages headend replication. No multicast IP addresses or special network configuration is required.
- Hybrid : The optimized unicast mode. Offloads local traffic replication to physical network (L2 multicast). This requires IGMP snooping on the first-hop switch, but does not require PIM. Firsthop switch handles traffic replication for the subnet.
- Clusters – Pick the clusters that should be added to the transport zone.
