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nsx-t-gen

Concourse pipeline to install NSX-T v2.x

DEPRECATED

This pipeline is not supported or maintained going forward as of Oct 17th, 2018. This was a best-effort, unofficial, unsupported work at best. All development work has now stopped.

Kindly use the VMware's nsx-t-datacenter-pipelines which contains fork of this repository code (a bit older) that would be supported and maintained by VMware.

Details

The concourse pipeline uses ansible scripts created by Yasen Simeonov and forked by the author of this pipeline.

There is an associated blog post detailing the features, options here: Introducing nsx-t-gen: Automating NSX-T Install with Concourse

Recommending checking the FAQs for full details on handling various issues/configurations before starting the install.

Things handled by the pipeline:

  • Deploy the VMware NSX-T Manager, Controller and Edge ova images
  • Configure the Controller cluster and add it to the management plane
  • Configure hostswitches, profiles, transport zones
  • Configure the Edges and ESXi Hosts to be part of the Fabric
  • Create T0 Router (one per run, in HA vip mode) with uplink and static route
  • Configure arbitrary set of T1 Routers with logical switches and ports
  • NAT Rules setup for T0 Router
  • Container IP Pools and External IP Blocks
  • Self-signed cert generation and registration against NSX-T Manager
  • Route redistribution for T0 Router
  • HA Spoofguard Switching Profile
  • Load Balancer (with virtual servers and server pool) creation
  • Security Group creation and association with the server pools to handle dynamic membership

Not handled by pipeline:

  • BGP or Static Route setup (outside of NSX-T) for T0 Routers

Pipeline

Users can choose to run the full install or portions of the install (base install to bring up the Fabric and Mgmt, Config routers and extras separately )

Canned-pks

For users looking at installing NSX-T in fully isolated or offline environments, please check the canned-pks on how to use an offline version of this pipeline that would use cached/offlined copies of various dependencies (docker images, pipeline sources, ova or other install bits along with the offline version of the pipeline itself). The canned-pks install takes a very opinionated view of install (only single compute cluster supported vs any number of compute clusters in nsx-t-gen, pre-determined set of parameters for things that are not specific to env etc.)

Note

To install NSX-T v2.2, use the nsxt-2.2 branch of pipeline templates of this repo. Similarly, use nsxt-2.3 for installing NSX-T v2.3.

Warning

This is purely a work-in-progress and not officially supported by anyone. Use caution while using it at your own Risk!!.

Also, NSX-T cannot co-reside on the same ESXi Host & Cluster as one already running NSX-V. So, ensure you are either using a different set of vCenter, Clusters and hosts or atleast the cluster that does not have NSX-V. Also, the ESXi hosts should be atleast 6.5. Please refer to NSX-T Documentation for detailed set of requirements for NSX-T.

Pre-reqs

  • Concourse setup
  • If using docker-compose to bring up local Concourse and there is a web proxy, make sure to specify the proxy server and dns details following the template provided in docs/docker-compose.yml
  • If the webserver & the ova images are not still reachable from concourse without a proxy in middle, check if ubuntu firewall got enabled. This can happen if you used concourse directly as well as docker-compose. In that case, either relax the iptable rules or allow routed in ufw or just disable it:
sudo ufw allow 8080
sudo ufw default allow routed
  • There should be atleast one free vmnic on each of the ESXi hosts
  • Ovftool would fail to deploy the Edge VMs in the absence of VM Network or standard switch (non NSX-T) with Host did not have any virtual network defined error message. So, ensure presence of either one. Refer to Adding VM Network for detailed instructions.
  • Docker hub connectivity to pull docker image for the concourse pipeline
  • NSX-T 2.1 ova images and ovftool install bits for linux
  • Web server to serve the NSX-T ova images and ovftool
# Sample nginx server to host bits
sudo apt-get nginx
cp <*ova> <VMware-ovftool*.bundle> /var/www/html
# Edit nginx config and start
  • vCenter Access
  • SSH enabled on the Hosts

Offline envs

This is only applicable if the docker image nsxedgegen/nsx-t-gen-worker:<version> is unavailable or env is restricted to offline.

  • Download and copy the VMware ovftool install bundle (linux 64-bit version) along with nsx-t python modules (including vapi_common, vapi_runtime, vapi_common_client libs based on version of nsx-t) and copy that into the Dockerfile folder
  • Create and push the docker image using
 docker build -t nsx-t-gen-worker Dockerfile
 # To test image:  docker run --rm -it nsx-t-gen-worker bash
 docker tag  nsx-t-gen-worker nsxedgegen/nsx-t-gen-worker:latest
 docker push nsxedgegen/nsx-t-gen-worker:latest

VMware NSX-T 2.* bits

Download and make the following bits available on a webserver so it can be used by pipeline to install the NSX-T 2.x bits:

# Download NSX-T 2.1 bits from
# https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=NSX-T-210&productId=673

#nsx-mgr-ova
nsx-unified-appliance-2.1.0.0.0.7380167.ova   

#nsx-ctrl-ova
nsx-controller-2.1.0.0.0.7395493.ova  

#nsx-edge-ova
nsx-edge-2.1.0.0.0.7395502.ova  

# Download VMware ovftool from https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?productId=614&downloadGroup=OVFTOOL420#
VMware-ovftool-4.2.0-5965791-lin.x86_64.bundle

Edit the pipelines/nsx-t-install.yml with the correct webserver endpoint and path to the files.

Register with concourse

Use the sample params template file (under pipelines) to fill in the nsx-t, vsphere and other configuration details. Register the pipeline and params against concourse.

Sample setup

Copy over the sample params as nsx-t-params.yml and then use following script to register the pipeline (after editing the concourse endpoint, target etc.)

#!/bin/bash

# EDIT names and domain
CONCOURSE_ENDPOINT=concourse.corp.local.com
CONCOURSE_TARGET=nsx-concourse
PIPELINE_NAME=install-nsx-t

alias fly-s="fly -t $CONCOURSE_TARGET set-pipeline -p $PIPELINE_NAME -c pipelines/nsx-t-install.yml -l nsx-t-params.yml"
alias fly-l="fly -t $CONCOURSE_TARGET containers | grep $PIPELINE_NAME"
alias fly-h="fly -t $CONCOURSE_TARGET hijack -b "

echo "Concourse target set to $CONCOURSE_ENDPOINT"
echo "Login using fly"
echo ""

fly --target $CONCOURSE_TARGET login --insecure --concourse-url https://${CONCOURSE_ENDPOINT} -n main

After registering the pipeline, unpause the pipeline before kicking off any job group

Video Recording of Pipeline Execution

Follow the two part video for more details on the steps and usage of the pipeline:

  • Part 1 - Install of OVAs and bringing up VMs
  • Part 2 - Rest of install and config

Options to run

  • Run the full-install-nsx-t group for full deployment of ova's followed by configuration of routers and nat rules.

  • Run the smaller independent group:

base-install for just deployment of ovas and control management plan. This uses ansible scripts under the covers.

add-routers for creation of the various transport zones, nodes, hostswitches and T0/T1 Routers with Logical switches. This also uses ansible scripts under the covers.

config-nsx-t-extras for adding nat rules, route redistribution, HA Switching Profile, Self-signed certs. This particular job is currently done via direct api calls and does not use Ansible scripts.