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vCenter Network Services

This section describes the procedures for configuring network services via the vSphere Client.

VPC Network Services

Explore the configuration guides for each VPC network service:

vCenter VPC Network Services

  • VPC Gateway
    Logical router for VPC networking.
  • VPC Subnet
    Logical Subnet (to connect VMs/K8s workloads).
    Optionally, a Subnet-VLAN can also be created.
  • NAT
    Supports multiple NAT configurations:
    . External-IP (1:1 NAT)
    . Outbound-NAT (N:1 SNAT)
    . NAT (SNAT/DNAT)
  • DHCP
    DHCP services can be configured as:
    . DHCP Server (managed by VCF)
    . DHCP Relay (using an external DHCP server such as Infoblox)
  • Load Balancer
    Configuration not available from vCenter (available through VMware AVI Load Balancer).
  • VPN
    Configuration not available from vCenter (available through NSX).

Prerequisite: vCenter must be VPC-ready

Before configuring VPC network services, the VPC Network Connectivity (Centralized or Distributed) must be configured.
vCenter VPC Ready

VPC Northbound Architecture

Explore the configuration guides for each VCF Network Infrastructure and External Connectivity & Service:

vCenter VPC Connectivity

VCF Network Infrastructure

  • Edge Cluster / Edge Node
    NSX Edge appliances providing centralized network services for Central Transit Gateway Designs.
  • VNA Cluster / VNA Node
    NSX Virtual Network appliances providing centralized network services for Distributed Transit Gateway Designs.
  • Tier-0 / BGP
    Tier-0 logical router providing connectivity between Centralized Transit Gateways and the physical network.
    Configuration not available from vCenter (available from NSX).

External Connectivity & Services

  • External Connection
    Connection between the VPC environment and the physical network.
  • Transit Gateway
    Logical router connecting VPC Gateways to physical networks.
  • IP Blocks External (Infoblox) + TGW Priv.
    IP blocks used for VPC IP allocation.
    Not represented in the diagram.
  • Network Span
    Defines how VPC subnets span across vCenter clusters.
    Not represented in the diagram.
  • Connectivity Profile
    Defines the VPC's connection to the Transit Gateway, specifies the assigned External and Private-TGW IP blocks, and determines which VPC Services are enabled.
    Not represented in the diagram.
  • Connectivity Policy
    Defines cross-VPC communication rules.
    Not represented in the diagram.
Personal Node on what could be added later
  • section to talk about "Design" to help customers choose between all those options (Centralized / Dist) and what needs to be configured for each
  • corner use case "Internet/DC1" External Connections
  • Infoblox

Document Versioning

This guide is updated for VCF 9.1+.
If you are running an older version, some options may not be available.