Although in most cases, it’s not necessary to obtain the NSX VIBs, there are some situations where you’ll need them. Most notably is when incorporating the VIBs into an image profile used for stateless auto-deploy ESXi hosts.
In older versions of NSX, including 6.0.x and 6.1.x, it used to be possible to use the very simple URL format as follows:
https://<nsxmanagerIP>/bin/vdn/vibs/<esxi-version>/vxlan.zip
For example, if you wanted the NSX VIBs for ESXi 5.5 hosts from an NSX manager with IP address 192.168.0.10, you’d use the following URL:
https://192.168.0.10/bin/vdn/vibs/5.5/vxlan.zip
This URL changed at some point, I expect with the introduction of NSX 6.2.x. VMware now uses a less predictable path, including build numbers. To get the exact locations for your specific version of NSX, you can visit the following URL:
https://<nsxmanagerIP>/bin/vdn/nwfabric.properties
When visiting this URL, you’ll be greeted by several lines of text output, which includes the path to the VIBs for various versions of ESXi. Below is some sample output you’ll see with NSX 6.3.2:
# 5.5 VDN EAM Info VDN_VIB_PATH.1=/bin/vdn/vibs-6.3.2/5.5-5534162/vxlan.zip VDN_VIB_VERSION.1=5534162 VDN_HOST_PRODUCT_LINE.1=embeddedEsx VDN_HOST_VERSION.1=5.5.* # 6.0 VDN EAM Info VDN_VIB_PATH.2=/bin/vdn/vibs-6.3.2/6.0-5534166/vxlan.zip VDN_VIB_VERSION.2=5534166 VDN_HOST_PRODUCT_LINE.2=embeddedEsx VDN_HOST_VERSION.2=6.0.* # 6.5 VDN EAM Info VDN_VIB_PATH.3=/bin/vdn/vibs-6.3.2/6.5-5534171/vxlan.zip VDN_VIB_VERSION.3=5534171 VDN_HOST_PRODUCT_LINE.3=embeddedEsx VDN_HOST_VERSION.3=6.5.* # Single Version associated with all the VIBs pointed by above VDN_VIB_PATH(s) VDN_VIB_VERSION=6.3.2.5672532 Legacy vib location. Used by code to discover avaialble legacy vibs. LEGACY_VDN_VIB_PATH_FS=/common/em/components/vdn/vibs/legacy/ LEGACY_VDN_VIB_PATH_WEB_ROOT=/bin/vdn/vibs/legacy/
So as you can see above, the VIB path for ESXi 6.5 for example would be:
VDN_VIB_PATH.3=/bin/vdn/vibs-6.3.2/6.5-5534171/vxlan.zip
And to access this as a URL, you’d simply tack this path onto the normal NSX https location as follows:
https://<nsxmanagerIP>/bin/vdn/vibs-6.3.2/6.5-5534171/vxlan.zip
The file itself is about 17MB in size in 6.3.2. Despite being named vxlan.zip, it actually contains two VIBs – both the VSIP module for DFW and message bus purposes as well as the VXLAN module for logical switching and routing.
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