A cloud platform edge cluster is typically included as part of a design that also incorporates VMware NSX for vSphere. The primary purpose of the cloud platform edge cluster is to place the controller virtual machines for NSX for vSphere and all customer edge devices that are provisioned as part of the onboarding and ongoing provisioning process onto a dedicated and segmented cluster.

A dedicated edge cluster hosting all VMware NSX Edge™ devices is able to act as a demarcation line to the Internet, or to corporate VLANs, so that the network administrator can provide management in a more secure and centralized way. For instance, this might mean that external connectivity needs to be configured only on the edge cluster hosts.

Three controllers must be deployed for NSX to provide sufficient redundancy and majority decisions from the controllers, and therefore this is considered the minimum number of hosts that can be configured to act as a cloud platform edge cluster.