NSX-V and NSX-T are two different virtualization solutions with distinct features. NSX-V is designed for VMware virtual machines, while NSX-T offers support for multiple hypervisors, containers, and cloud integration.
Updated by Dan Zeng on 2023/11/03
NSX-T (where 'T' stands for Transformers) is designed to address many aspects that NSX-V was not intended to cover, such as multi-hypervisors. NSX-T is a multi-virtual machine hypervisor-aware SDN stack available for vSphere, KVM, OpenStack, Kubernetes and Docker.
It is aimed at addressing emerging application frameworks and architectures with heterogeneous endpoints and technology stacks. One of the primary use cases of NSX-T is containers. In today's virtualization landscape, we are witnessing an increasing number of applications running outside of virtual machines.
Many of you are already using or have heard something about NSX-V. This is one of the best products that VMware has developed since they acquired Niciria 5 years ago, and the product has gotten better and better over the years. NSX has revolutionized SDDC by adding SDN capabilities.
But a major limitation of NSX-V is that it can only be used with vSphere and cannot be used with other platforms. Customers have consistently been requesting an NSX version that can integrate with non-vSphere platforms. In line with VMware's NSX Cloud multi-cloud strategy, VMware introduced NSX-T, which is an infrastructure-agnostic version of NSX. This version of NSX can integrate with other hypervisors such as KVM and application frameworks like Openshift, Docker, and Pivotal. In addition to these platforms, you can also integrate the vSphere platform with NSX-T.
This can lead to confusion for users - are VMware NSX-V vs NSX-T the same? What is the difference between NSX-V and NSX-T? To address this question, here are the key distinctions between them.
It is specifically designed for VMware virtual machines because it is the traditional virtualization mechanism that has been in place since the advent of server virtualization.
With NSX-V, organizations can mobilize network connectivity between virtual machines and allow these workloads to connect in ways that physical network hardware cannot effectively deliver.
NSX-V (NSX for vSphere) is for vSphere deployments only. Its architecture enables a single NSX-V manager platform to be associated with a single VMware vCenter Server instance. The NSX-V platform is the original NSX platform and has been around for several years.
In most cases, if you want to run a software-defined network infrastructure within the VMware vSphere domain, NSX-V is the platform you are most likely to use.
When considering support for multiple hypervisors, it's important to highlight that NSX-T is decoupled from VMware vCenter Server. NSX-T is an independent solution applicable to both vCenter and vSphere environments. Furthermore, it can extend its support to KVM, public clouds, containers, and integrate into frameworks like Red Hat OpenShift and Pivotal.
When comparing the two products, you'll find that the NSX-T is more cloud-focused with forward-thinking features. It also allows organizations to choose the most suitable solution for their use case, whether it involves virtual machine management, containers, bare metal, or public cloud.
Additionally, VMware NSX-T integrates with the VMware Photon platform, which is a cloud-centric operating system developed from the ground up, similar to the current vCenter server running on that platform. NSX-T also includes NSX-T Container Network Interface (CNI) plugins, enabling developers to configure network connections for container applications, thus assisting in providing infrastructure-as-a-service.
Interestingly, with NSX-T, VMware has transitioned away from the VXLAN-based encapsulation used in NSX-V and adopted the updated "Geneve" encapsulation. This architectural difference renders NSX-T and NSX-V currently incompatible.
In comparison to the more common VXLAN, what is the Geneve encapsulation standard, particularly when there are many hardware devices in the market that support VXLAN?
Geneve is a new version of encapsulation co-authored by VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat and Intel. Geneve combines the best current encapsulation protocols (such as VXLAN, STT and NVGRE) into one protocol. There is a lot to learn from current network virtualization protocols. And as NSX matures, the need for more extensible encapsulation protocols has surfaced. Geneve allows metadata to be inserted as TLV fields, which can be used for new features as needed.
Other NSX-T architecture changes to note:
Separated from vCenter
NSX-T Manager and NSX-T Controller can be deployed as VMs on ESXi or KVM.
There is a new "hostswitch" (N-VDS) designed for multi-manager support. This is a variant specifically tailored for KVM, resembling VMware's vSwitch and Open Virtual Switch.
Utilizing Geneve Encapsulation - it is still recommended to maintain an MTU of 1600 for the encapsulation header.
Routing Changes - NSX-T leverages next-generation optimized routing, which offers logical separation between Provider Routers (Tier0 routers) and Tenant Router functionality (Tier1 routers).
Standard HTML5 interface for configuration and management.
Although VMware NSX-T vs NSX-V differ in their technical implementations. But their ultimate goal is to provide software-defined networking and security features for virtual machines. For enterprise users, these products can be used to better manage and protect their virtual machine resources.
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In summary, NSX-T vs NSX-V cater to different virtualization needs. NSX-V is specifically designed for VMware-centric environments, while NSX-T offers greater versatility, supporting multiple hypervisors, containers, and cloud integration. Vinchin Backup & Recovery provides simplified virtual machine backup and recovery features for various virtualization platforms, complementing these solutions. You can experience its functionality with a 60-day free trial.
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