Manage and report on an NSX installation status using ESXi Command Line Interface (CLI) commands

 
Throughout Objective 7.1, I will be referencing the NSX CLI documentation. For this section, the ESXi CLI commands are on pages 81-87 under the title ESXi CLI Commands. I think it’s important to understand how to find the specific command you are looking for, rather than just mindlessly attempting to memorize them all. For example in esxcli you can hit enter, to find out the next arguments and in net-vdr you can run –help to see all the possible arguments. I will reference a few commands from the documentation so you can see syntax and output, however I recommend just running through each of the ESXI CLI commands in a lab. Note: I am not really sure what they mean by manage and report an NSX installation using ESXi CLI, as the only things I can think of are using logs like hostd.log to observe and NSX Manager, Controller, Router, Edge, etc. deployment failure or success.
 

ESXi CLI commands

 
Command: esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan config stats get
 
Functionality: The output will be Level: 1 confirms that statistics are enabled. You can set to 0 to disable, or leave it to enabled.
 
Example output
 

~ # esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan config stats get
   Level: 1
~ # esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan config stats set --level=0
~ # esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan config stats get
   Level: 0

 
 
Command: esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan get
 
Functionality: Shows VXLAN global states
 
Example output
 

~ # esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan get
   Controlplane Out Of Sync: No
   UDPport: 8472

 
 
Command: esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan list
 
Functionality: Shows VXLAN switch information for all DVS
 
Example output
 

~ # esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan list
VDS ID                                           VDS Name        MTU  Segment ID    Gateway IP    Gateway MAC        Network Count  Vmknic Count
-----------------------------------------------  -------------  ----  ------------  ------------  -----------------  -------------  ------------
33 e7 16 50 ff 34 99 37-d4 c1 04 d2 13 51 6b 8a  Mgmt_Edge_VDS  1600  192.168.18.0  192.168.18.1  ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff              3             1

 
 
Command: esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan network list –vds-name=DVS_NAME
 
Functionality: Show vxlan network information for a specific VDS.
 
Example output
 

~ # esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan network list --vds-name=Mgmt_Edge_VDS
VXLAN ID  Multicast IP               Control Plane                        Controller Connection  Port Count  MAC Entry Count  ARP Entry Count
--------  -------------------------  -----------------------------------  ---------------------  ----------  ---------------  ---------------
    5004  N/A (headend replication)  Enabled (multicast proxy,ARP proxy)  192.168.18.31 (up)              1                0                0
    5003  N/A (headend replication)  Enabled (multicast proxy,ARP proxy)  192.168.18.32 (up)              2                1                0
    5000  N/A (headend replication)  Enabled (multicast proxy,ARP proxy)  192.168.18.32 (up)              1                1                0

 
 
Command: esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan network stats reset -vxlan-id value –vdsport-id value
 
Functionality: Retrieves VLXAN network VTEP table for VDS
 
Example output
 

~ # esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan network vtep list --vds-name Mgmt_Edge_VDS --vxlan-id 5000
IP             Segment ID    Is MTEP
-------------  ------------  -------
192.168.18.36  192.168.18.0    false

 
There are many more ESX CLI commands that may be on the VCIX-NV test. Again, if you know how to navigate your way around esxcli you should be able to accomplish whatever they ask you without too much trouble. Just remember that most of the commands will start with esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware vxlan then you can hit enter to find out what additional options you have.