
Now that a controller cluster exists, it’s time to prepare the hosts and clusters for NSX. This will provide the necessary user space tools and kernel modules in a non-invasive fashion. I’ll walk through the steps for both a GUI and API based installation.
Cluster Installation
In order to install the NSX bits on a host, you must select an entire cluster for the installer. I would imagine this requirement exists to ensure all hosts inside of a cluster are able to provide the NSX services to the virtual machines. There would be some serious consequences if your VM moved to a host without, say, the firewall functionality and was suddenly exposed.
I’ve chosen to prepare my Lab cluster below, which consists of three ESXi 5.5 hosts. Navigate to the Web Client > Networking & Security > Installation > Host Preparation. Choose your cluster and click the Install link.

You can watch the install tasks from the web or legacy client – for flavor, I mixed it up and watched the tasks kick off in the legacy client.

It’s normal to see a status of Installing with a Firewall status of Unknown during the install. It took my hosts a few minutes to install and report back.

Verification
Once completed, the status will change to the version of code running in the cluster. In my case, that’s version 6.0.3. There should also be a Ready checkmark next to each host with a Firewall status of Enabled. I’ve expanded the cluster objects below so that you can see what it looks like.

API Calls
As with the NSX Controllers, you can also make an API request to the NSX Manager to complete this task. To install the software, create a POST request, or use a PUT request to upgrade the software. Note that you’ll need the cluster’s ID as shown below:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | POST https://nsx-mgr-ip/api/2.0/nwfabric/configure <nwFabricFeatureConfig> <resourceConfig> <resourceId>domain-c9</resourceId> </resourceConfig> </nwFabricFeatureConfig> |
Here it is in my handy Advanced REST Client for Chrome:

Next Steps
The hosts are now running all of the required NSX code. In the next post, we’ll focus on Configuring VXLAN and VTEPs so that we can start building logical switches.
Very useful article!
well done
very useful article
Incredibly informative. Thanks for the article!
I can’t wait to have a trial NSX copy to perform all the steps you described so well!
Just finished a 2 day NSX class at EMC Office in Conshohoken PA, great potential for this.
Very useful information.
Great information in a useful format!
Nice series.thanks!
For one of my clusters, We attempted and uninstall that just hangs at the sand clock, been like that for days. Not sure if the uninstall completed or now. Maybe this is a cosmetic bug that will disappear if I reboot vCenter (which is not something I want to do). In this state, I can’t re-install either, any ideas anyone?
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6349310/install.png
Hmm. You could try bouncing the NSX Manager appliance or the vCenter’s Web Client service. Also, check the hosts that are having their software bits uninstalled and see if they are in a “reboot pending” status.
Hmmm, must be some persistent stale data somewhere. I bounced the NSX manager, restarted vmware-client on the VCA and migrated all VMs in that cluster and did a rolling restart of each esx host, then restarted NSX Manager and vmware-client process a second time, but the uninstalling status still exists 🙁
Any other ideas anyone?
[…] Part 4 – Working with NSX – Preparing The Cluster and Hosts by Chris Wahl […]
[…] That’s it! There is now a 3 node controller cluster for the NSX environment that will be used to handle control plane activities for the virtualized network. The next section focuses on Preparing The Cluster and Hosts. […]
Speaking about VM migration (seeCluster Installation) I don’t think it can be moved away from the cluster since it uses a logical switch port, am I wrong?
@samcer – If the VDS spans multiple clusters, than a VM could potentially move to a cluster that does not have NSX installed. This is covered in greater detail here: http://virtualclouds.biz/2014/12/01/caveat-multi-cluster-vds-design-nsx/
[…] Chris Whal -Preparing The Cluster and Hosts […]
Very informative. Thanks.
Very good. Thank you.
Great to see that you can do it without putting the VM in maintenance mode. Thanks you for the article.
Information given is very straight-forward.
Good job!
Thx for sharing.. Quite straight forward the installation
Great explanation and easy to follow. Thanks
Nice post, Chris!!
very good post. thank you
Great post. Thanks again.
Great tutorial, the explanation step by step is very good
Thx!!
Excellent series!
Fantastic Job .
Keep the API references/examples coming! 🙂
Excelent series on working with nsx
Another good step by step guide from chris
Nice to see a blog showing API and not just GUI guides
Nice post for newbie and intermediate (because showing API)
It took some time for me to carve up my test environment for my first trial. But these articles really helped
Thanks Chris, I´m setting up my NSX lab, this blog is very useful.