Disclaimer: I work for Brocade, all views and expressions on this blog are entirely my own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
VMware NSX has had the Hardware VXLAN Gateway feature (a.k.a. Hardware VTEP) in tech preview since NSX 6.2 but since the release of VMware NSX 6.2.3 last month, it is officially supported.
Brocade has been a long-time partner of VMware and overnight we’ve received the great news that Brocade is the first (and for now only) vendor to be certified by VMware for Hardware VXLAN Gateway support, as you can see in the VMware Compatibility Guide. I hope the title didn’t give this away?
The VDX 6740 is the first platform to be supported, expect the VDX 6940 to be supported soon as well.
If you have VMware NSX, or are considering VMware NSX for your environment, using the Hardware VTEP functionality makes sense for a lot of deployments. My colleague Dmitri Kalintsev has done a great write-up on his blog on what Hardware VTEP is, why you might need it and why the Brocade VDX platform provides distinct benefits.
Small teaser: it really helps with scalability, availability and redundancy in your VMware NSX environment, and Brocade makes it very easy for you to use!