Configure and Manage Transport Zones in NSX
Create a Transport Zone
A transport zone is a user defined scope for VXLAN networking traffic. The scope is defined by you as a set of clusters that will operate in this transport zone. You can defined multiple transport zones, or just a single transport zone, it all depends on your environment. When you add a transport zone, you will be given 3 different options for the Control Plane Mode:
Multicast: Multicast will send a single packet from a source device to multiple destinations. This option requires Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) to be enabled on your environment as well as IGMP. The documentation states it’s only recommended when you are upgrading from older VXLAN deployments.
 
Unicast: No special physical networking configuration is needed, unlike multicast. The NSX controller handles the control plane.
Hybrid: Hybrid is a combination of both multicast and unicast. IGMP snooping is required on the first-hop switch, however you do not need PIM. The first-hop is essentially used as a proxy to handle traffic replication in its subnet.
Step 1. Log into the vSphere Web Client and navigate to Networking & Security -> Installation -> Logical Network Preparation
Step 2. Click the + sign to add a new Transport Zone, specify a Name the Replication mode and the Cluster(s) then hit OK
Note: If you get the error below, it is because you are attempting to apply UNICAST mode to an ESXi 5.1 host, unicast is only supported for ESXi 5.5 or higher.
Invalid control plane mode UNICAST_MODE selected
Configure the control plane mode for a Transport Zone
Configuring the Control Plane Mode for the transport is done during the creation of the transport zone as you saw in the previous steps. If you would like to modify the Control Plan Mode you can right click on the transport zone and select Edit Settings
Add clusters to Transport Zones
To add a cluster to a Transport mode you can right click on the Transport Zone and select Add Clusters. Select the appropriate checkbox by the cluster(s) you would like to add then hit OK
Remove clusters from Transport Zones
To add a cluster to a Transport mode you can right click on the Transport Zone and select Remove Clusters. Select the appropriate checkbox by the cluster(s) you would like to remove then hit OK
Leave A Comment