In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), organizations often need to deploy multiple VCF instances across different geographical regions or data centers for reasons like disaster recovery, business continuity, scalability, and regional optimization. To address these needs, NSX Federation allows for a seamless, consistent networking and security policy management across multiple VCF instances deployed in different sites. This multi-VCF instance deployment with NSX Federation creates a unified, scalable network architecture across a distributed cloud environment.
In this architecture, NSX Federation extends the power of NSX-T Data Center across multiple VCF instances by federating networking, security, and operational policies. This enables organizations to manage networking and security policies consistently, regardless of where the workloads are located. Let's explore how NSX Federation can be used to deploy multiple VCF instances and how it enhances the network and security capabilities in a distributed VCF deployment.
Key Concepts:
1. NSX Federation Overview
NSX Federation is a feature of NSX-T Data Center that allows multiple NSX-T instances (across different VCF instances or data centers) to operate as a single logical NSX domain. Federation provides the ability to:
- Share network topologies across multiple NSX instances.
- Replicate security policies (e.g., micro-segmentation) between sites.
- Implement consistent networking (e.g., VLANs, IP address spaces, overlay segments) across different regions.
- Enable inter-site routing and firewalling with centralized management.
Federation allows customers to achieve a consistent, global network fabric that spans different VCF instances, while maintaining local control over each site’s network configurations and security policies.
2. Federated NSX Managers and Regional NSX Domains
- Federated NSX Managers coordinate the communication between multiple NSX-T instances (or regions). These managers maintain the configuration, operational state, and policies of the federated domains.
- Each NSX Manager in a region is associated with a local NSX domain, which operates independently but can communicate with other domains in the federation.
3. Global and Local Federation Controllers
- The Global Federation Controller is responsible for managing federated NSX instances across regions, while local controllers handle the operational tasks and distributed processing within their respective data centers.
- The global configuration includes shared data such as logical segments, routing policies, and firewall rules, while local configurations contain site-specific settings like local IP pools, logical switches, and security policies.
4. Use Cases for NSX Federation in Multi-VCF Instances
- Disaster Recovery and Site Failover: Multiple VCF instances are deployed in different regions (e.g., Site A and Site B) for high availability, with seamless failover between sites.
- Cross-Region Load Balancing: Applications and workloads that span multiple VCF instances can maintain consistent load balancing and failover policies across sites.
- Consistent Security and Micro-Segmentation: Security policies such as micro-segmentation can be applied globally across all sites, ensuring that even in multi-site environments, the same security policies are enforced.
- Global IP Addressing and Routing: IP address spaces and routing policies are federated across VCF instances, allowing seamless communication between workloads in different data centers.
