It’s always an exciting day when a new build of NSX is released. As of August 21st, NSX 6.4.2 (Build 9643711) is now available for download. Despite being just a ‘dot’ release, VMware has included numerous functional enhancements in addition to the usual bug fixes.
One of the first things you’ll probably notice is that VMware is now referring to ‘NSX for vSphere’ as ‘NSX Data Center for vSphere’. I’m not sure the name has a good ring to it, but we’ll go with that.
A few notable new features:
More HTML5 Enabled Features: It seems VMware is adding additional HTML5 functionality with each release now. In 6.4.2, we can now access the TraceFlow, User Domains, Audit Logs and Tasks and Events sections from the HTML5 client.
Multicast Support: This is a big one. NSX 6.4.2 now supports both IGMPv2 and PIM Sparse on both DLRs and ESGs. I hope to take a closer look at these changes in a future post.
MAC Limit Increase: Traditionally, we’ve always recommended limiting each logical switch to a /22 or smaller network to avoid exceeding the 2048 MAC entry limit. NSX 6.4.2 now doubles this to 4096 entries per logical switch.
L7 Firewall Improvements: Additional L7 contexts added including EPIC, Microsoft SQL and BLAST AppIDs.
Firewall Rule Hit Count: Easily see which firewall rules are being hit, and which are not with these counters.
Firewall Section Locking: Great to allow multiple people to work on the DFW simultaneously without conflicting with eachother.
Additional Scale Dashboard Metrics: There are 25 new metrics added to ensure you stay within supported limits.
Controller NTP, DNS and Syslog: This is now finally exposed in the UI and fully supported. As someone who is frequently looking at log bundles, it’ll be nice to finally be able to have accurate time keeping on controller nodes.
On the resolved issues front, I’m happy to report that 6.4.2 includes 21 documented bug fixes. You can find the full list in the release notes, but a couple of very welcome ones include issues 2132361 and 2147002. Those who are using Guest Introspection on NSX 6.4.1 should consider upgrading as soon as possible due to the service and performance problems outlined in KB 56734. NSX 6.4.2 corrects this problem.
Another issue not listed in the release notes – it may have been missed – but fixed in 6.4.2 is the full ESG tmpfs partition issue in 6.4.1. You can find more information on this issue in KB 57003 as well as in a recent post I did on it here.
Here are the relevant links for NSX 6.4.2 (Build 9643711):
I’m looking forward to getting my lab upgraded and will be trying out a few of these new features. Remember, if you are planning to upgrade, be sure to do the necessary planning and preparation.
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