So now that NSX Intelligence is enabled,
let's go ahead and generate some traffic that it can go ahead
and give us a visual representation of.
So let's click on the networking tab here in the NSX Manager.
Let's go to Network Topology and let's take a look at the topologies.
This is the NSX topology that I put together last night after I rebuilt this
lab.
I've got a tier zero gateway with a couple of interfaces using a couple of edge
nodes
going out to the external world.
Then I have down here a lab one,
a SEG 55 and a lab one, SEGMNT 66, which are two overlay networks. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
a SEG 55 and a lab one, SEGMNT 66, which are two overlay networks.
Then I have a couple of VMs on each of those segments.
So if we take a closer look at that, let me go ahead and click here on these
two VMs.
So I've got a little VM called Mint on 105500
and a little web server at 105500152.
And over here off SEGMNT 66, if we click on that, expand that,
I've got a little Linux Mint system here on the 106600 network.
I also have a little web server here at 106600.151.
I also took the liberty of creating a couple of groups WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
I also took the liberty of creating a couple of groups
just to logically put these two Mint VMs in a single group
and the two web servers in a single group.
And let me show you that as well.
So if we click here on inventory on the left, we click here on groups.
Here I have a group called clients.
Let me actually rename that and put a little period in front of that.
And that way it will always sort to the top,
although it starts at the C.
I'm going to make it a little more consistent and click on save.
And then I also have a group called web servers.
I'm going to edit that and also put a little period right in front of that.
So it's sourced to the top of our output. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So it's sourced to the top of our output.
So click on edit and for the benefit of this demonstration,
I'll go ahead and put a little period in front of that, click on save.
And that should sort those two to the top.
Fantastic.
So there's our clients group.
There's our web servers group.
And if we click here on view members for the clients group,
I have the two Mint VMs there.
Fantastic.
And if we click on the web servers group and click on view members,
I've got the two little web servers right there.
Fantastic.
And then we'll click on refresh there to make sure it's all good.
So let me bring up remote consoles for those devices,
the two clients and the two web servers just to verify they have connectivity WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
the two clients and the two web servers just to verify they have connectivity
and that we can generate some traffic.
So here in the vSphere client, let's go down to VMs for testing.
And then I've got a VMs on NSX segments.
And then I've got a folder called VMs for segment 55 with one Mint computer
and one web server.
Then I have a folder called VMs on segment 66 with one VM that's a client.
And one VM that's a server here as well.
And they're all running.
So let's open up remote consoles to each of those.
Let's start off with the web servers.
So we're going to right click on the web server that's on segment 55 WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So we're going to right click on the web server that's on segment 55
and open a remote console there.
And we'll also open up a remote console to our web server over on the 1066
segment as well.
So I'll right click on that VM, that web server, and click on open remote
console.
All right, and here they are.
So this is the little teeny itty bitty VM on the 1055 network.
And let's bring in the other one.
This is the little VM over on the 1066 network.
And they are both running web services.
And just as a sanity check, if we went to a command prompt on each of those,
let me also verify we can get out to the internet. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
let me also verify we can get out to the internet.
We'll do a ping out to www.google.com and it says, are you root?
Nope.
So we'll do a pseudo and a ping out to www.google.com.
And sure enough, that is working.
That's great.
I will do some more treatment over here on the web server at 1066.
So we'll open up a command prompt and do a ping out to www.vmware.com.
And that looks great too.
We'll do a control C to stop that.
I just want to verify that internet connectivity works and DNS is working.
So that's our two little web servers. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So that's our two little web servers.
Let me go ahead and minimize those.
Next, let's take a look at our Mint Linux VMs, which are going to be acting as
our clients.
So let me launch a remote console to our client here on the 1055 network.
And I'll also launch a remote console to our Mint Linux system over on the 1066
network.
So here's our Linux client on the 1055 network.
Let's verify its IP address.
We can do that with the IP address command or I have config.
Either way, it'll be great.
So this is at 1055 0151.
And we go ahead and minimize that.
And let's open up a browser. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And let's open up a browser.
So from here, we're going to do a quick check out to fast.com just to verify
internet
connectivity.
And that is looking like we have internet connectivity.
Great, great, great.
Let me open up another tab.
And let's go over to our little web servers.
So let's go to 10.55.0.152.
That's one of our web servers.
That looks great.
And I will go ahead and add that also to the bookmarks.
And let's also go over in another tab to 10.66.0.151 press enter.
And that also looks good. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And that also looks good.
So both of those servers have the same page that says welcome to the web server
.
So I'm going to add that as a bookmark as well and click on save.
And then we can go ahead and do an F5 or a refresh on each of those a few times
to generate
some traffic.
I also have a little script that's going to generate some traffic for us.
And let me go ahead and do a LS here.
And it's called traffic.sh.
If we do a more traffic.sh, it simply does a curl to the IP addresses of each
of those
servers.
1055 0.152 and 1066 0151 to generate some HTTP traffic. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
1055 0.152 and 1066 0151 to generate some HTTP traffic.
So it does a pause for five seconds after each one.
This will be repeats that batch file.
So I'm going to go ahead and launch that to generate some traffic.
So that is on its way.
So I make sure we get one more fantastic.
So I'll minimize that and let's take a look at the other Linux client over on
the 1066
network.
So that one's right here and let's verify its IP address with the command IP
address
or we can use I have config.
Either way, it would be great.
And this is at the IP address of 1066 0152. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And this is at the IP address of 1066 0152.
And if we opened up a browser, let's verify internet connectivity in general
with a real
quick speed test.
And that is looking good.
And let's also open up a couple of tabs to each of our internal servers, one at
.152
on the 1055 network.
And the other one at 151 on the 1066 network.
And if you're asking, why do they have those kind of weird hosted addresses?
And the answer is there's just D HTTP clients and whatever IP address they got,
that's what
I'm using.
So the first one is at 10.55.0.152. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So the first one is at 10.55.0.152.
That looks good.
We'll create a bookmark for that and click on save.
And then in another tab, we'll go to the other server and that's at 10.66.0.151
.
And that looks good too.
And we'll create a bookmark for that as well.
So we'll click on save.
And then for each of these sites, we can do a refresh a few times.
And then we can refresh that with either using a refresh here or we can do a
control
shift R and Windows computer or an F5.
I also have a batch file we can run here as well.
So if we go to the command prompt and do an LS, I've got this little batch file WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So if we go to the command prompt and do an LS, I've got this little batch file
called
traffic.sh.
It does a very similar thing as the other VM did.
And that is it simply does curl multiple times.
So we type in more traffic.sh.
There is the script and let's go ahead and launch it and away it goes.
I just want to make sure it's going to succeed a couple times here.
And once we confirm that, we can go ahead and let these batch files simply run
in the
background.
All right, that's looking good.
It's updating.
Also, let's open up another tab in our browser and let's just verify YouTube
and that seems
to be working.
Go ahead and launch a video to generate some content being downloaded from WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Go ahead and launch a video to generate some content being downloaded from
YouTube.
So this one will do we'll click on that.
And because I'm not logged in as myself, I have a nice little commercial here.
So I'll go ahead and skip that so it can get right to the video.
Also, let me go ahead and open up a new command prompt to verify my IP address
one more time.
And let me generate some ping traffic over to 10660152 from the VM that's over
on the
1055 segment.
So here is the remote console for the other side.
Let me open up another window there.
And from here, let's do an I have config just to verify our address. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And from here, let's do an I have config just to verify our address.
So sure enough, we're at 10550151.
And let's do a continuous ping over to 10.66.0.152 press enter.
So fantastic.
So I've got a lot of traffic being generated in the background on these two VMs
with some
of that traffic going out to the internet and some of the traffic going
internal.
And if we go back to the NSX manager and click on networking and look at the
network
topology, so for traffic flows, we could expect some traffic between here and
here.
We expect some traffic between here and here because of the pings and from and WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
We expect some traffic between here and here because of the pings and from and
between
here and here and also between here and here and also between this VM and this
web server.
And we also have some traffic that we're expecting to go out to the internet.
And of these web servers, we're also using DNS and need to do DNS queries or
doing updates
or anything else.
If they're going out to the internet, there'd be flows out to the internet for
them as
well.
And the concern is that if we want to lock this down and only have permitted
traffic
flows, we have so much traffic going on, it's really hard from an estimation
perspective
to correctly predict all of the protocols and ports involved because when these WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
to correctly predict all of the protocols and ports involved because when these
mint
clients are going out to YouTube, for example, it's not just HTTP as they're
using.
They're also very likely going to be using quick, which is going to be using
UDP.
So with the NSX intelligence feature, it can very specifically show us the
traffic flows
involved and then secondly, which is amazing, make recommendations for firewall
policy
rules on how to permit the traffic that we want as we get closer and closer to
implementing
firewall policy rules that are allowing traffic that we want to allow through WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
firewall policy rules that are allowing traffic that we want to allow through
and at the same
time denying other traffic that we don't want to allow.
Also here as part of this topology, if we go to security and on the left, if we
go down
to distribute a firewall, I just want to point out that by default, I don't
have any specific
firewall rules in place.
So nothing at the distributed firewall other than the defaults and also nothing
at the
gateway firewall, again, other than the defaults, which are permitting
everything.
So if we went to plan and troubleshoot here and we went to traffic analysis and
went to
trace flow, if we wanted to trace traffic, for example, from one of our VMs, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
trace flow, if we wanted to trace traffic, for example, from one of our VMs,
let's go
ahead and choose our mint on 1055, which is trying to go over to our web server
over
on the 1066.
Let's go ahead and grab that one as the target and let's say for traffic, we
want to go ahead
and match on TCP, that's going to port 80, which is the well known port for
HTTP and for
the source port, we six, seven, eight, three, so some high numbered port.
And then we'll go ahead and scroll down and click on trace.
And that's just going to confirm for us the flow of traffic and also show us WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And that's just going to confirm for us the flow of traffic and also show us
any firewall
rules that might be preventing that traffic.
Now since we already verified from the actual clients that those traffic flows
work, I would
expect this also to confirm that.
So if we scroll up and look at the play by play here, here showing us going
through the
distributive firewall and not being blocked there and it's going over the
physical network
through our tunnel endpoints, then once again, it's being checked against the
distributive
firewall and then finally being delivered.
So notice here that there's no edge nodes that were needed because all that
traffic was
East West traffic.
So if we do a new trace, let me go ahead and give us a little more real estate WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So if we do a new trace, let me go ahead and give us a little more real estate
here and
click on new trace and click on proceed.
And this time, let's do a trace from one of our Linux Mint computers going out
to an
Internet resource.
So for the destination, instead of virtual machine, I'll go ahead and say IP
address and
let's go ahead and say layer three and let's go out to eight dot eight dot
eight dot eight
and let's imagine we're trying to make a DNS request.
So we'll say UDP and the well known port.
There is UDP port 53 and for the source port, some high numbered port.
All you six seven eight three just for fun. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
All you six seven eight three just for fun.
And then we'll go ahead and scroll down and click on trace.
So this is simulating a UDP request using traditional UDP port 53 trying to go
out to
a DNS server at eight eight eight eight and sure enough, that's working.
So it's going through the extrude of firewall and because it's going out to the
external
network, it gets handed over via the tunnel endpoints from the host blue one
over to an
edge node who is the active edge node in my topology.
And then it makes the forwarding decision, including using that before it
forwards it
out. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
out.
All right.
So we have network traffic at this very moment that is being generated.
We have two groups.
We have a group for our web servers, which is right here.
And we have a group for our clients, which is right here.
So our next logical step now that we have traffic flowing through our network
is to
use NSX intelligence to give us a really concise view of what really is
happening on
that network.
And that's what we get to do in the very next video.
So I'll see you there in just a moment.
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