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Spend time on the VMware products website, and you’ll understand why VMware is the “go-to” product for cloud computing and virtualization technology. It’s fast, secure, and easy to implement. That said, if this is your first foray into VMWare, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the number of product options.
This article – the first in a series explaining VMware offerings – is designed to simplify things. We hope to explain what specific VMware products do, why each one is important, and what skills you need to leverage them in your own organization. In this article, we’ll look at VMware NSX-T™ Data Center.
What is NSX-T and why should you care?
Launched in 2013 as a network virtualization solution, NSX allows you to turn your physical network into a virtual one, and then share it. Users can reconstruct different virtual network attributes— including switches, ports, routers, firewalls, etc. NSX can reproduce entire physical networks, from the simple to the complex, as a software solution.
VMware initially tied NSX with vSphere: this was known as NSX-V Data Center, and while you might see it referenced in research, it’s being replaced by the next generation of software-defined data centers (SDDC) called NSX-T Data Center. The major difference between NSX-T and NSX-V is that NSX-T is “unlocked” from VMware vSphere (in other words, you don’t need a vCenter Server to deploy NSX-T). The “T” in NSX-T stands for “Transformers,” as the product was intended to transform customers beyond simple on-prem network virtualization with vSphere and into the realm of hybrid cloud and the software-defined data center model.
So why use the SDDC model?
The primary reason to use the SDDC model is that it allows you to fully utilize your data center resources as a virtualized pool, and work within a hybrid cloud environment. As you might expect, this creates many economic and scalability advantages: you can centralize and simplify the management and deployment of the network.
With an API-driven architecture, built-in distributed security, and streamlined operations, VMware NSX-T is uniquely designed for modern cloud deployment. This short video from the VMware YouTube channel introduces NSX.
Learn more
To find out more about NSX-T and the strengths of migrating to NSX-T Data Center, check out the VMware products page.
Once you decide to move to NSX-T Data Center, expand your knowledge to leverage all of its features. Because NSX-T is designed for system and network administrators, its key to understand TCP/IP services and network security.
With that skill set as a foundation, take the VMware NSX-T Data Center: Install, Configure, Manage course, covering the key features and functionality offered in the NSX-T Data Center. This course is also strongly recommended if you plan to be VCP-NV 2022 certified.
Next Article: Navigating VMware’s Certification Labyrinth