According VMware Lifecycle link here NSX-T 2.5 is reaching End of General Support on 2021-09-19 and End of Technical Guidance on 2022-09-19.
This version of NSX-T Data Center ended General Availability on 2019-09-19 meaning since then you can’t download this version for usage but does not mean is not running anywhere.
You may have an environment that was deployed with NSX-T version 2.5 and was left there alone for any of the following reasons (or others, every place is unique)
- Never hit a bug.
- Don’t need new features.
- Is working as is and don’t want to touch it.
- Was deployed and configured and never touched again after your created 100’s of segments on Day2.
- Follows networking firmware lifecycle or anti-lifecycle with a operational decision of “Don’t touch it until is broken”.
- Don’t need to improve security.
- NSX is deployed but unused. Layer2 VLANs on physical devices is still the practice used by network engineers.
- Don’t have in-house expertise for NSX or your team skill is locked in single Vendor: Cisco, Juniper, Dell, you name it.
The list of reasons you could be running NSX-T 2.5 or any version older than 3.x can be long.
We see still in 2021 a lot of enterprises and service providers without NSX implementation, manually creating Layer2 VLANs, running NSX-V with plans to migrate to NSX-T in the long future despite of End of General Support being around the corner on 2022-01-16 (in short without a real plan) and the best one having NSX implemented and not using it at all.
Interested on software defined networks but prefer an Open Source project?
Check these projects. Source of list here
- Beacon
- Faucet
- lighty-core
- Cherry
- NOX/POX
- ONOS
- Open vSwitch
- Tungsten
- OpenDaylight
- OpenKilda
- Project Calico
- Floodlight
- RUNOS
- Ryu Controller
- The Fast Data Project
- vneio/sdnc
If you are still reading and you have NSX-T 2.5 running and want to know what you need to do to plan your upgrade. Keep reading for a list of steps to take to get your upgrade project started.
Step 1 – Check your upgrade path
Check the Product Interoperability Matrix Upgrade Path and Interoperability with other products to know what versions you can upgrade to and what else you may need to upgrade.
Example: VMware vCenter Server 6.5 U3 is the oldest version supported for VMware NSX-T Data Center 3.1.2
Step 2 – Read the release notes
Check release notes for each release between version 2.5 and the one you are installing to avoid surprises.
This way you know what you are getting: new features, resolved issues, known issues.
Latest release notes for NSX-T version 3.1.2.1 is here. From this link of you can check older versions notes also.
Step 3 – Read the upgrade guide
Start preparing your upgrade plan by reading the upgrade guide and follow the NSX-T Data Center Upgrade Checklist.
You can access the upgrade guide here
Step 4 – Run and test your backups before and after upgrades
You will love this one if something goes wrong and you need to restore NSX-T.
In case you have old backups and need to delete some of them you can use the Python script nsx_backup_cleaner.py for this task.
You can find the Python script nsx_backup_cleaner.py in the directory /var/vmware/nsx/file-store on NSX Manager.
Documentation here
nsx_backup_cleaner.py -d backup_dir [-k 1] [-l 5] [-h]
Or
nsx_backup_cleaner.py --dir backup_dir [--retention-period 1] [--min-count 5] [--help]
Required parameters:
-d/--dir: Backup root directory
-k/--retention-period: Number of days need to retain a backup file
Optional parameters:
-l/--min-count: Minimum number of backup files to be kept, default value is 100
-h/--help: Display help messageThat is all for now. I hope you learned something or got motivated on upgrading NSX-T to latest version.
If you liked this post or you know of someone who can find this useful share it. Let’s use the force of sharing to motivate removing this old version of NSX-T 😀