I have recently had the chance to do some reading on VMware NSX. I come from a networking background Intertwined with software, previously I have had a chance to research on some of the underpinnings of NSX but never had the time to look at the big picture, so in this writing, I am going to briefly describe the NSX architecture.

What is NSX?

Management Plane

Control Plane

Data Plane

In summary, I found NSX pretty decent compared to other Software-Defined solutions out there. The clear decoupling between the different network functions did it for me.  It is important to keep in mind that NSX being improved and developed, in its current state (v6.1) it only supports one data center instance, in future releases (v6.2) , it will support universal policy and universal state management taking datacenter networking to a whole new level.

Of course this article is just scabbing the surface, however, I hope that it has helped you get a better understanding of what NSX is and what it is capable of. Please contact me if you think modifications / corrections are needed.