NSX Components
When We talk about NSX components, we have below components as part of NSX deployment
Data Plane
NSX data plane consists of many logical component that provision NSX services like Routing , Switching , bridging , logical firewall. It consists of vSwitch which use vsphere distributed switch (vDS) from vCenter to connect to the physical network and enabling all services. NSX kernel modules, userspace agents, configuration files, and install scripts are packaged in VIBs that are installed to esxi during the nsx configuration phase.
It uses VXLaN which provides many benefits
1) less numbers of VLANs in physical network
2) You can configure same L2 zone over IP network (two diff location)
3) you many configure East west , North South Traffic to between many tenants and control the traffic as per need
The logical routers can provide L2 bridging from the logical networking space (VXLAN) to the physical network (VLAN
The gateway device is typically an NSX Edge virtual appliance. NSX Edge offers L2, L3, perimeter firewall, load balancing, and other services such as SSL VPN and DHCP
Control Plane
The NSX control plane runs in the NSX Controller cluster. This is control station for all NSX operations ,
No Data Plane traffic pass through it but all instructions regarding routing and switching are executed by controllers. only.
NSX controllers are deployed in a high available manner generally failure of one controller do not impact functionality of others and not even Data plane traffic.
so there is always a master selection between controllers and another controller will take over if master fails.
The three NSX Controller nodes form a control cluster. The controller cluster requires a quorum (also called a majority) in order to avoid a "split-brain scenario." In a split-brain scenario, data inconsistencies originate from the maintenance of two separate data sets that overlap. The inconsistencies can be caused by failure conditions and data synchronization issues. Having three controller nodes ensures data redundancy in case of failure of one NSX Controller node.
Management Plane
NSX manager is the key component of Management plane , its centralized network management component and its a single point of configuration and REST API entry-points.
It is a virtual Appliance deployed on any of the management esxi cluster. There is always a one to one mapping for your NSX manager and vCenter server even if you are in a cross-vCenter NSX environment.
The NSX management plane is built by the NSX Manager, the centralized network management component of NSX. It provides the single point of configuration and REST API entry-points.
The NSX Manager is installed as a virtual appliance on any ESX™ host in your vCenter Server environment. NSX Manager and vCenter have a one-to-one relationship. For every instance of NSX Manager, there is one vCenter Server. This is true even in a cross-vCenter NSX environment.
