Edge Cluster

NSX BGP Peering Issue in Holodeck 5.2x Workload Domain

Pradeep Adapa1 Comment

Recently, while I was deploying an NSX Edge Cluster in the Workload domain in the Holodeck 5.2x (I deployed VCF 5.2.1) when I encountered an error in SDDC Manager “Verify NSX BGP Peering” which failed the Adding Edge Cluster task.

Here are the screens on how it looked once I logged into NSX Manager Web UI

You can see that the BGP Neighbors are showing as down in the UI
You can also see that the BGP Neighbors configuration is correct but they still show as down

After a lot of troubleshooting, I got some help from my fellow vExpert Abbed Sedkaoui who directed me to check the BGP Configuration in CloudBuilder and the config file to check was the gobgpd.conf file in /usr/bin

This is how the old configuration was in the gobgpd.conf file which only had the BGP Neighbor IPs of the NSX Edges and it Tier-0 Config from the Management Domain

Edit this gobgpd.conf file and add the Tier-0 Uplink Interfaces as BGP Neighbors in this file as the below Screenshot

I have added the uplink IPs (172.27.11.10,11.11, 172.27.12.10,12.11) to the BGP neighbors list

Once the file is saved (You will have to hit ESC and then type :wq!, hit Enter), you can restart the gobgpd service with the following command

systemctl restart gobgpd

This will restart the gobgpd service and in a few minutes you should see the BGP Neighbors going green instead of down status in the NSX Manager UI

here is the command to check the gobgpd status in cloud builder

systemctl status gobgpd

NOTE: All the above commands are to be executed as root in the cloudbuilder appliance, first you SSH into the appliance using admin credentials and then use su to login as root in the appliance. (su creds are same as admin creds in the holodeck lab)

Now you can restart the NSX BGP Peering task again in SDDC Manager and it should go through and create the Workload Domain.

How to Add NSX Edge Cluster to the Workload Domain in SDDC Manager

Pradeep Adapa1 Comment

This post is a continuation to the one which I made on How to Create a Workload Domain in the SDDC Manager.

Login into the SDDC Manager, Go to the Workload Domain which you have created (In my case the workload domain name is wld-domain), go to the Edge Clusters tab

Click on Edge Clusters tab

Ignore the Errors in my lab, that’s just license errors in the lab env.

Click on Add Edge Cluster option as in the screenshot below

Clicking on Add Edge Cluster will pop another window
Click on Select All option and click Begin to start the process
Provide the Cluster Name, MTU Size, Tier-0,1 Router Names, The Edge Cluster Profile Type is set to Default, provide the root passwords and credentials and click Next
Select the option ‘Custom’ under Edge Cluster Settings so that you can change the Edge Form Factor of the Edges (I used Medium in my lab), Select the HA option and scroll down to select the Routing type
Select the option EBGP as we are going to use the BGP routing protocol in this Lab as that is how holodeck was designed. Use the ASN as 65003 as NSX Edges will always be in this ASN according to the architecture diagram
Note the ASN of the NSX Edge Cluster and its BGP Neighbors (Cloud Builder acts as BGP Neighbor) here.
Next, we provide the Edge Node details
In the VM Management Portgroup Name, you can give the portgroup name which you want the SDDC Manager to create as it will create the portgroup, or you can use existing VM management portgroup which was already created when we created the workload domain. If you want to use the existing portgroup, just click on the option “USE ESXI MANAGEMENT VMK’S VLAN” which is also VLAN 10 and then provide the EDGE TEP details
Edge-1 TEP Details as per the holodeck architecture
First Tier-0 Uplink details
Second Tier-0 Uplink details
Once you have provided all the details for Edge Node 1, click on Add Edge Node option

Perform the same steps to add the Edge Node 2 as well but with its own IP Addresses

Two Edge Nodes have been Added
Summary Screenshot 1
Summary Screenshot 2
Summary Screenshot 3
Summary Screenshot 4
Summary Screenshot 5
Summary Screenshot 6
Summary Screenshot 7 – Click Next for Validation of the Edges Configuration
NSX Edge Cluster and its Validation

Once everything is Validated with no errors, it will start the Deployment of the Edge Cluster with Edges in the workload vcenter

Edge Cluster Progress
Completion of the NSX Edge Cluster in SDDC Manager
Verification of the NSX Edge Cluster with its Edges under the workload domain in SDDC Manager

This Concludes this post on how to deploy NSX Edge Cluster with 2 Edges in the Workload Domain using SDDC Manager

I have encountered an issue while deploying the NSX Edge Cluster in the workload domain in Holodeck and that is while it was trying the NSX BGP Peering Verification from the SDDC Manager and the BGP Neighbors were down. This was not provided in any documentation and I have documented about this issue and its resolution in this post.