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VMware NSX

Score8.7 out of 10

44 Reviews and Ratings

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What is VMware NSX?

VMware NSX is network virtualization technology. VMware NSX is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud Foundation.

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Reviews

What users are saying about VMware NSX.
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VMware NSX -- More Than Just Hype

Incentivized
Christina Harding
Network System Administrator in Information Technology at Hutto Independent School District (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Broadcast Suppression: By suppressing broadcast traffic, we have been able to deploy a single VDI network in a /18 network space, allowing for rapid growth and proper DHCP lease timing for a VDI instant clone environment.
  • Networking HA: Leveraging internal mechanisms for high availability, it provides disaster resiliency to a virtual networking environment.
  • Cost Savings: All available features of NSX are licensed simultaneously. Load balancers, firewalls, and routers are all licensed as features, not per object, allowing for the deployment of as many of these objects as are needed.

Cons

  • Firewall rules can break all communication. If a rule is improperly written, it can block all communication to the hosts, vCenter(s), and NSX components, requiring lengthy recovery times.
  • If NSX components break, it can break the entire system if it is not properly designed. No components are required to manage NSX which should exist behind NSX networks, just like no vCenter components should exist behind vCenter objects (VVols, VSAN, DVS).

Return on Investment

  • Increased security.
  • Increased agility.
  • Increased flexibility.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure

Other Software Used

VMware Horizon (formerly VMware View), VMware AppDefense, Skyward Student Management System

Firewall and load balancer for your VMware environments

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • Versatile in terms of features
  • Modular
  • Easy integration if you are heavy vSphere user

Cons

  • Interoperability in multi-vendor environments
  • Advanced networking and packet acceleration options can be improved

Most Important Features

  • Seamless integration with VMware
  • Ability to integrate across bare-metal, VMs and containers
  • Modular and easy to operate

Return on Investment

  • Easy to manage networking and security
  • Better visibility into the environments

Alternatives Considered

Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) and Juniper Contrail Networking

Other Software Used

Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform (VSP)

Meets our high security requirements, but comes with the matching high price tag

Incentivized
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • End to end encryption on the wire.
  • Micro-segmentation.
  • Integrates well with existing VMWare environment.
  • Integrates well with our existing network.

Cons

  • Our biggest challenge is gaining acceptance from network engineers who are used to working with other technologies.

Return on Investment

  • Ability to move workloads more easily with the ability to stretch/move networks across multiple physical locations.
  • The added flexibility allows you to expedite tech refreshes since you're no longer constrained by the hardware.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure

Other Software Used

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering PAN-DB, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Panorama, Cisco Nexus, Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000), Cisco ASA, Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000), Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000), F5 BIG-IP, HAProxy, Kubernetes, vSphere, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ansible