Architecting Tenant Networking with NSX in vCloud Director : Networking Layers Examined : 4.4 vCloud Director Multitenant Networking in NSX
   
4.4 vCloud Director Multitenant Networking in NSX
For vCloud Director to take advantage of NSX, the vSphere environment which vCloud Director is to manage must be prepared for NSX first. The design considerations for an NSX underlay (VTEP Transport) network are the same whether the consumer is to be vCloud Director or, another CMP or orchestration tool, the specifics of which are beyond this document. However, during the design of a standalone NSX deployment, a number of choices are presented to the architect. When vCloud Director is managing the NSX environment, some of those decisions are made by vCloud Director, both at installation and during subsequent management of the environment.
The relationship between the network elements in vCloud Director and those of the underlying NSX and vSphere platforms, is examined in the following table.
Table 2. vCloud Director Tenancy and Network Elements in NSX and vSphere
vCloud Director
NSX or vSphere
Notes
Provider VDC
NSX Transport Zone
The configuration of a PVDC causes the creation of a Transport Zone within NSX. The new Transport Zone’s Control Plane Mode is initially set to multicast and should be changed from the NSX user interface or API immediately if this is not the preferred setting.
External Network
vSphere Port Group
An external network is created in the data center infrastructure, vCenter Server networking, and vCloud Director Cloud resources dialogues. See Appendix A: Provisioning an External Network in vCloud Director for more details.
Edge Services Gateway
NSX Edge
An Edge Services Gateway created with the Org VDC configuration results in the creation of an NSX Edge. The initial name given to the Edge Services Gateway in vCloud Director is encoded into the NSX Edge name together with a UUID field to ensure unique names across tenants.
Org VDC Networks
NSX Logical Switch /
vSphere Port Group
The creation of an Org VDC Network in vCloud Director results in the creation of an NSX logical switch with the initial Org VDC network name and a UUID in its name. This then results in a dvPortGroup being created in vSphere with the logical switch name and VXLAN network (segment) ID encoded into its name.