Does your business use VMware NSX-V? Then it's time to migrate to NSX-T. In this article we look at why that single change of letter will make all the difference to your networking and security virtualisation.

The most important reason why you should make the change is that NSX-V is winding down. At the time of writing, users are no longer able to access general support, and technical guidance is being reduced.

This will be ended altogether in January 2023 with the potential to increase your chances of service disruption and security risks.

A consequence of this is that your in-house technicians will have to focus much of their energy, time and talent on firefighting problems caused by NSX-V.

To avoid this nightmarish, costly and time-consuming scenario, you'll need to migrate to VMware's newer piece of software, NSX-T – and luckily for you, it has a raft of new features that make it all worthwhile.

What the upgrade could mean for you

So what's the big deal? Well, NSX-T's biggest selling points are its speed and flexibility. The traffic flow between data centre and cloud (or cloud and cloud) can be bumpy at times – but like a traffic cop and pothole-filler rolled into one, NSX-T gets rid of bumps in the road and keeps the traffic moving.

It also has the capacity to streamline your network administration. Network and security policies can be created, managed and removed with such speed and ease that most of the team don't need to be involved – freeing them up for other tasks.

So NSX-T is smoother, faster and more flexible. But that's just one of its silver linings. Its headline feature is its ability to manage multiple clouds.

Multi-cloud networking

Backing up to multiple clouds is good business sense. It keeps you online 24/7/365 and spreads risk in case of downtime or security breaches.

It's also a logistical nightmare – if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Thankfully, NSX-T can help you to manage, scale and secure those different clouds with relative ease.

This improvement is made possible by NSX-T's relationship with vCenter – which differs from its predecessor's.

A quick recap: vCenter is an application that lets you manage your SDDC stack – kind of like a digital control tower overseeing the virtualisation of your physical servers.

NSX-V was very dependent on both vCenter and vSphere. Your vCenter software had a one-to-one relationship with its NSX manager.

The big downside here is that there are plenty of companies who use multiple vCenters. In this case, each vCenter has to have its own NSX manager – and things quickly get messy and complicated.

By contrast, NSX-T is the hub of a wheel with multiple spokes – vCenters, containers, clouds and physical servers. This makes it easier than ever to manage multiple clouds.

One way to visualise this improvement is by comparing the ways in which you access the two different pieces of software on your computer.

With old-school NSX-V, you log in to vCenter and your NSX manager is there as a plugin. With NSX-T, you log in to the manager itself, and from there you can manage multiple vCenters, "decoupled" from a specific vCenter.

With NSX-T you can manage consistent networking and security policies across private and public clouds from a single pane of glass. This can be achieved irrespective of where your applications run – be they VM, container or bare metal.

Scale

NSX-T is built for scale. As you know, the amount of data and applications used by companies is forever increasing – so you need software that can grow in tandem with your requirements.

Security

NSX-T has new security features to further protect data in both physical and virtualised forms.

NSX-V offered micro-segmentation. The idea here is that you can split your data into digital segments and then protect each segment individually. It's a bit like taking £1 million in cash and storing it in 100 different safes, each with its own passcode.

NSX-T takes this further. Now, a full-stack firewall is available across each and every workload. This improvement is made without any changes to your vSphere – and without any modifications to your physical servers at all.

In other words, NSX-T provides painless, one click implementation of a comprehensive firewall for your data centre – bringing you closer to the Valhalla of zero-trust security.

Network automation

NSX-T boasts better automation support than its predecessor. Because it's centrally managed and controlled, it's able to automate consistent networking across all your physical and cloud-based workloads – that means monitoring, troubleshooting, maintenance and updates.

Cloud-native apps

NSX-T supports and protects cloud-native apps – those micro-services which live on the cloud and which are multiplying every day.

Often, data centre workers have to make manual adjustments to ensure these apps don't pose security risks.

NSX-T aims to eliminate these chinks in the data centre's armour. It does this by applying security policy to cloud-native apps as they would to any other endpoint.

This is one area where its improved micro-segmentation comes into play. Micro-services are now micro-segmented so that each and every cloud-native app is secure.

Greater precision, more granularity – the result is consistent visibility of traffic across all platforms, sites, apps and clouds.

How we can help

VMware's NSX-T is a powerful tool that makes it easier than ever to deploy network services. But it needs to be designed, deployed and configured correctly to ensure business continuity and cost savings.

Cloud technologies are niche – and virtualised networking is a niche within that niche. Whatever their talents, your team may find the complexities of NSX-T hard to handle – which could create problems down the line.

That's where we come in.

Here at Ascend Cloud Solutions we know VMware like the backs of our hands. We have decades of experience with its software suite. We were born in the cloud – and since then we've managed 400 successful cloud migrations and counting.

If you need cloud support, look no further. Take a look at our cloud computing services or drop us a line – we'd love to hear from you.