VMware NSX and vShield Upgrades

There are many new Edge and Firewall advancements at Zettagrid. These advancements will impact all customers at some point, and it is important that you understand the changes. There are 3 phases to our Edge upgrade project:

1. Cease sale of vShield as of 5-Jun-2019 and introduce NSX Advanced Edges as default for new VDCs.
2. Migrate existing NSX VDC management from the Zettagrid MyAccount portal and into vCloud Director
3. Perform a free upgrade of existing vShield Edges to NSX Advanced Edges

Phase 1 - NSX is now the default Edge

We have now officially made VMware NSX the standard for all new customer VDC firewalls in the product catalogue. Customers with existing vShield Edges will continue to be able to use them but not purchase new ones. All new VDCs now must use an NSX Advanced Edge. Unfortunately, VMware will no longer support vShield in the next release of vCloud Director, hence the reason for the change.

Phase 2 - NSX Management is Moving into vCloud

We were early adopters of NSX (even before vCloud Director supported it). Customers also complained our admin interface was somewhat slow and missed some features. Now that vCloud Director 9.5 has full features to administer NSX, we have decided that we will migrate customer Edges to the VMware portal. There are so many great benefits:

• Edge Management is now fast and has good validation
• Edge Management is now integrated with vCloud Director so users can manage VMs and Edges in the one location.
• You now have access to:
• Live VPN Status
• Grouping Objects
• New SSL Certificate Settings
• SSL VPN
• Easier Firewall Rule Management
• L2 VPN

We have largely automated the migration of existing NSX Edge configuration into vCloud Director. There are edge cases and some features like VPN SSL certificates will need to be reinstalled. Migration will occur on a customer by customer basis over the next 4 months. The network outage window is about 5 minutes per edge. VMs remain online during this upgrade. If you are interested in being migrated early, please contact support@zettagrid.com

Phase 3 - vShield to NSX Upgrade

Over the next few months all customers with legacy vShield Edges will be upgraded to NSX. The upgrade process is very quick and will result in a 15-minute network outage as the edge is upgraded. VMs remain online during this upgrade. If you are interested in being migrated early, please contact support@zettagrid.com

Interface Changes

Virtual Data Centres that have had their NSX migrated to vCloud Director or had their vShield upgraded to NSX will see a reduced number of MyAccount tabs because networking is now managed in vCloud Director.

Next Steps

You do not need to do anything. We will contact you to schedule migration of your existing vShield or NSX into vCloud Director. If you want to take advantage of the new features now, please contact support@zettagrid.com.