ACI coexist with NSX-T

[m1xed0s]

When NSX-V was the focus from VMware, the ACI can coexist with NSX-V without much concern if company is so choose to. From NSX-V perspective, the ACI provides underlay fabric and VMM integration. Then NSX-V just handles the micro-seg pieces. This was easy and no departments (Cisco vs VMware) within the organization are pissed off (politically or technically)... networking people take care of routing/switch physical or virtual; vmware people takes care of VMs; security people take care of the micro-seg policies...

But now with NSX-T, this kinda coexist is not that clear, right? Especially NSX-T needs the N-DVS instead of DVS...which means there is no VMM integration in this scenario, right? So networking people take care of physical routing/switch and work with vmware people for virtual networking; vmware people takes care of VMs and N-DVS...; security people take care of the micro-seg policies...

[ngkin2010]

Hi,

This is an interesting topic, and I have the same question when I studying both SDN solutions. Great to see other experienced user to share more to us.

Server guys tend to use NSX-T, while Network guys tend to use ACI.

But I always think that there is no reason and not beneficial running both ACI and NSX-Tat the same time.

Both NSX-T and ACI is also designed for multi tenancy, as well as mico segmentation... using both in the way of underlay & overlay seems like a waste..

[m1xed0s]

Regarding "reason and benefits running both ACI and NSX-T at the same time", it is more political than technical from my experience...

VMware would say NSX-T is multi-tenancy capable but from my perspective it is not, or at least not the way ACI implements multi-tenancy using VRF. For example, how would NSX-T handle overlapping IP subnets between tenants? This is a typical multi-tenancy requirement The T0/T1 DR architecture in NSX wont solve this.