VMware NSX to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Migration with F5 Distributed Cloud

Introduction

This article has an attached guide (PDF) that shows how to move workloads from VMware with NSX networking to OpenShift Virtualization with F5 Distributed Cloud (XC).
F5 Distributed Cloud provides the following NSX-like functionalities in a single pane of glass:

• L7 load balancing services
• L3 firewalling
• NAT
• DHCP Server
• Built-in service discovery
• BGP
• Multi-site L3 connectivity, allowing to have several sites in different locations
• Multi-cloud L3 connectivity, allowing to have both on-prem and cloud sites
• Multi-tenancy with VRF-like segmentation.

And the following additional functionalities:

• Exposing of services across sites transparently
• Web App and API protection (WAAP)
• Primary/Secondary DNS and GSLB
• Bot defense
• Client-side defense
• Routed DDoS defense
• Content Delivery Network

OpenShift Virtualization [1] [2] is Red Hat´s offering for KubeVirt virtualization, a solid virtualization platform for VM workloads which provides the following foundations to complete the solution:

• Hypervisor (KVM) and VM management
• L2 networking including overlays and micro-segmentation

The migration described in the guide doesn’t require changing the IP addresses of the VMs. It is also important to remark that although the guide is named a “migration guide,” F5 XC allows VMware and OpenShift Virtualization environments to coexist and seamlessly connect workloads in both environments simultaneously, facilitating smooth interoperability and transition. 

 

Overview of the guide

Please note: this solution relies on the use of Secure Mesh Sites v2 which at time of this writing is released as Early Access (EA), is still not feature complete and might have changes before its General Availability (GA) release. 

The recommendations and solution design in this guide might also change when the software is released GA. These should be considered non-production at the time of this writing. Please contact your sales representative for details.

The guide is composed of the following sections:

1       INTRODUCTION

2       SOLUTION DESIGN

2.1     LAYER 3 OVERVIEW: REPLACING A L3 NSX TOPOLOGY WITH XC

2.2     LAYER 2 OVERLAYS, PHYSICAL NETWORKS AND MICRO-SEGMENTATION      

2.3     LAYER 3 DETAILED DESIGN

2.4     MIGRATING SUBNET PREFIXES FROM NSX TO XC        

2.5     LOAD BALANCERS AND VIPS

2.6     COMPLETE NETWORK DIAGRAM USED IN THIS GUIDE     

3       OVERVIEW OF THE MIGRATION PROCESS       

3.1     STEP 1 - DEPLOYMENT OF XC CE SITES IN THE VMWARE DEPLOYMENT

3.2     STEP 2 - VIP MIGRATION FROM THE ORIGINAL LB TO XC       

3.3     STEP 3 - DEPLOYMENT OF XC CE SITES IN OPENSHIFT VIRTUALIZATION 

3.4     STEP 4 - VIPS AND VM WORKLOAD MIGRATION

4       ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

 

Final remarks and next steps

OpenShift Virtualization is a strong virtualization foundation that, alongside F5 XC, provides a solution that allows migrating workloads gradually from NSX. This provides analogous and augmented functionality and keeps the original IP addresses, de-risking the migration.

Download the attached PDF to see the guide. This guide is a living document, and we expect to update it with improved content. We are looking forward to your questions and comments on the guide.