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NSX-T

Deploy NSX-T Edge VM SSH Keys with Ansible

While working with NSX-T, there are many reasons to access edge appliances using SSH. Most troubleshooting options are only available using nsxcli on the appliance itself. During the deployment, each appliance has 3 user account: root, admin, and audit. Alle Accounts are configured with password-based authentication. In a previous article, I've already described how to deploy SSH Keys using nsxcli, which allows a secure and comfortable authentication method. In this article, I'm explaining how to use ansible to deploy SSH public keys to NSX-T Edges. This option allows you to easily manage keys on a large platform.

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Error when connecting Virtual Machine to NSX-T Segments

When you try to connect an NSX-T based Segment to a virtual machine, the task fails with the following error message:

Reconfigure virtual machine - An error occurred during host configuration

In the nsx logfile on the ESXi host where the VM is located, the following error is displayed:

/var/log/nsx-syslog.log
2021-03-13T19:00:36Z nsx-opsagent[527252]: NSX 527252 - [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-esx" subcomp="opsagent" s2comp="nsxa" tid="527596" level="ERROR" errorCode="MPA44211"] [PortOp] Failed to create port 780b915d-1479-4eed-8e29-2364d9563f95 with VIF f3f605f2-38a1-4263-bbbd-81b189077f69 because DVS id is not found by transport-zone id 1b3a2f36-bfd1-443e-a0f6-4de01abc963e
2021-03-13T19:00:36Z nsx-opsagent[527252]: NSX 527252 - [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-esx" subcomp="opsagent" s2comp="nsxa" tid="527596" level="ERROR" errorCode="MPA42001"] [CreateLocalDvPort] createPort(uuid=780b915d-1479-4eed-8e29-2364d9563f95, zone=1b3a2f36-bfd1-443e-a0f6-4de01abc963e) failed: Failed to create port 780b915d-1479-4eed-8e29-2364d9563f95 with VIF f3f605f2-38a1-4263-bbbd-81b189077f69 because DVS id is not found by transport-zone id 1b3a2f36-bfd1-443e-a0f6-4de01abc963e

 

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How to Backup and Restore NSX-T

NSX-T is a critical infrastructure component and it is crucial to have a working backup and restore plan. With complex products, the backup and restore strategy gets more complicated. When working with Virtual Machines, the backup is usually done with VMware Snapshots, which is super convenient. Unfortunately, with the complexity of NSX-T which has many components like clustered Managers, Transport Nodes, and ESXi Kernel Modules, you can't use snapshots as a backup strategy.

This article provides an overview of how to backup NSX-T, and how the restore is done properly.

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Heads Up: NAT Configuration Changed in Cloud Director 10.2

With the release of Cloud Director 10.2, a major change to the NSX-T based NAT configuration has been implemented. The change affects how you set up DNAT and has caused some confusion after the upgrade.

In previous versions, the Application Profile (eg. SSH, HTTP, or HTTPS) defined the external and internal port. With the optional "Internal Port" setting it was possible to configure a custom internal port.

With Cloud Director 10.2, the Application profile defines the internal port only. If you do not fill in the "External Port" configuration, which is exactly in the same position as the "Internal Port" setting on previous versions, it translates ALL external ports to the configured Application. This is something you absolutely do not want to have and I've seen a lot of false configured NATs since Cloud Director 10.2.

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NSX-T: Client 'admin' exceeded request rate of 100 per second.

NSX-T has a default API rate limit of 100 requests per second, per client. This limit is sometimes already triggered when you are using the GUI with multiple people using the admin account. If you are using the API to get status information or configure your platform, you very likely know the error. When you exceed the limit, the following message is displayed.

Client 'admin' exceeded request rate of 100 per second.

This article shows a couple of methods to mitigate the limit.

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NSX-T: How to create a Principal Identity

In NSX-T, you can't create local users. Except for the three default users admin, root, and audit, you have to connect to an LDAP server or integrate NSX-T with VMware Identity Manager to authenticate with additional users. Additionally to normal users, NSX-T has the concept of Principal Identities, which are certificate-based users that can create objects that only the user itself can modify or delete.

This article explains how to create and work with a principal identity.

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Tanzu Kubernetes Licensing in vSphere 7.0 Update 1

With the release of vSphere 7.0 Update 1, VMware introduced a new licensing model for its Tanzu Kubernetes integration. Basically, the licensing has been changed from an ESXi-Host license to a Cluster license that looks familiar to the vSAN license which is in place for a couple of years. The change does only affect how you have to apply the license. The entity to pay for is still a physical CPU.

In vSphere 7.0 GA, the license required to enable Kubernetes (aka. "Workload Management") was an add-on license for ESXi Hosts named "vSphere 7 Enterprise Plus with Kubernetes". With the introduction of vSphere 7.0 Update 1, which is also referred to as 7.0.1, "vSphere add-on for Kubernetes" has been rebranded and split into 4 licenses Tanzu Basic, Tanzu Standard, Tanzu

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Quick Tip: Reset Tanzu SupervisorControlPlaneVM Alarms

When you are working with the Kubernetes Integration in vSphere 7.0, you might come into the situation where the SupervisorControlPlaneVM has an active alarm. Those Virtual Machines are deployed and controlled by the WCP Agent and even as an Administrator, you are not allowed to touch those objects.
You can't power then off, reboot, or migrate them using vMotion. The problem is that you can't even clear alarms. One alarm I recently had was the "vSphere HA virtual machine failover failed" alarm, which you usually see when the ESXi hostd crashed, but the Virtual Machines are still running.Read More »Quick Tip: Reset Tanzu SupervisorControlPlaneVM Alarms