Advancing from VMware NSX for vSphere to NSX-T

We introduced VMware NSX to the market over seven years ago. The platform has helped thousands of customers worldwide transform their network and bring the public cloud experience on-premises. This resulted in higher levels of automation and insight, which, in turn, saved time and money. However, as customers continued to drive new use cases and requirements, we wanted to ensure NSX was completely future-ready; hence NSX-T was born.

The Next Generation of NSX is NSX-T

NSX-T is the next generation of network virtualization and security platform with a complete L2-L7 suite of services, delivering switching, routing, firewalling, analytics, and load balancing entirely in software. Unlike NSX-V, NSX-T supports a variety of heterogeneous endpoints such as VMs, containers, and bare metal servers. The platform enables a wide range of use-cases in intrinsic security, networking and security for multi-cloud and modern apps, and network automation. The past few releases delivered many new networking and security innovations on NSX-T, prominent among these are the ultimate crown jewels of the platform – NSX Intelligence, Federation, and NSX Distributed IDS/IPS.

NSX Intelligence is a distributed analytics engine built and managed natively in NSX. It leverages granular workload and network context unique to NSX, so you can deliver a more granular security posture such as micro-segmentation policy creation, and gain data center-wide visibility.
NSX Distributed IDS/IPS is an advanced threat detection engine which detects lateral threat movement on east-west traffic. The unique distributed architecture and precise application context enable you to replace discrete appliances, avoid traffic hair-pinning, and achieve regulatory compliance.
Federation enables centralized policy configuration and enforcement across multiple NSX environments from a single pane of glass, enabling network-wide consistent policy, operational simplicity, and a simplified disaster recovery architecture.

Migrating from NSX for vSphere to NSX-T is top of mind for customers that need to transition. Here are answers to some questions that you, as a customer, may have on the migration to NSX-T.

When Should You Transition to NSX-T?

NSX for vSphere 6.4 will reach End of General Support (EoGS) on January 16, 2022, and End of Technical Guidance (EoTG) on January 16, 2023. View the VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix for information on key dates.

With seven major releases along a 4+ year path, NSX-T has reached a new level of robustness and feature richness. VMware’s strong commitment to innovation, customer focus, and investment in networking and network security continues. NSX-T is the way forward.

For customers on the older variant, active engagement in migration discussions now will ensure there is enough time provisioned to plan a proper migration.

What Are the Migration Paths to NSX-T?

There are several ways customers are migrating to NSX-T, most notably:

Self-migration Using the Migration Coordinator

Built into NSX-T 2.4 versions and newer, customers can use the Migration Coordinator utility to migrate without the assistance of VMware. As of today, several customers have migrated their environment from NSX for vSphere to NSX-T.

The Migration Coordinator tool not only helps migrate from NSX from vSphere to NSX-T Data Center using the same hardware (in-place migration), but it also helps migrate the actual configuration over from NSX for vSphere to NSX-T Data Center via GUI. It migrates both the networking components and their configuration and the configured security posture, including the rules and groups. The tool also provides a mode (Maintenance Mode) in which VMs are first vMotioned out before replacing NSX on the host to minimize downtime.

Check out the new ‘Migrate to NSX-T’ resource page for more information on the Migration Coordinator, FAQs, white paper, and demos. Please bookmark this page as we will continue to update the site with new content and resources as they become available.

Professional Services From VMware and Our Master Services Competent Partners

VMware Professional Services and our Master Services Competencies (MSC) partners can help customers transition and deploy NSX-T solutions. The service team involved will help design, deploy, and configure NSX-T appropriately as well as conduct a knowledge transfer session with the customer team.

Also, note that companies such as SPJ Solutions and ReSTNSX license their NSX migration products to help customers and partners accelerate migrations.

Please reach out to your VMware partner or customer account representative if you are interested in learning about these or other service offerings.

To find a local Network Virtualization MSC partner, use the Partner Locator search tool.

Do You Need to Purchase Additional Licenses for NSX-T if You Are Currently a NSX for vSphere Customer?

From a SKU/license perspective, the two NSX platforms are both part of NSX SKUs. If a customer has already purchased NSX, they are entitled to both NSX Data Center for vSphere and NSX-T.

Where Can You Access Advanced VMware NSX-T Training?

Here are some educational resources and offers available to customers:

NSX-T Professional Training led by VMware certified experts
Complimentary Knowledge Skills Assessment to identify Network Virtualization and Intrinsic Security skill gaps, then recommend training plans to address gaps
Free 6-month subscription to the VMware Learning Zone Premium Subscription with access to 1,500+ short-form instructional videos and VMware certification exam preparation modules

Final Note

Migrating existing deployments involves careful review and planning. Start early to ensure you have sufficient time provisioned to execute a proper migration. We are here to help.