NSXbytes0
NSX-v 6.2.3 has been out for a couple of weeks now and besides the new features and bug fixes there was a significant change to the licensing structure for NSX. Previously there really wasn’t any concept of NSX editions…however 6.2.3 introduced four new tiers. As was announced early May NSX-v comes in Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. At the time there was still no public mention of what was to happen to existing vCloud Network and Security customers utilizing vShield Endpoint…more so given that vCNS is to be end of lifed in September.

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Looking through the release notes for NSX-v 6.2.3 there is a section that talks about the licensing and in addition to the three editions there is a default license which allows use of the vShield Endpoint feature…which is called Guest Introspection under NSX.

“Change in default license & evaluation key distribution: default license upon install is “NSX for vShield Endpoint”, which enables use of NSX for deploying and managing vShield Endpoint for anti-virus offload capability only. Evaluation license keys can be requested through VMware sales.“

Everyone who is entitled to the vSphere vCloud suits will now download NSX instead of vCNS. Depending on your use case, that will dictate which license you decide to apply, therefore unlocking different features of NSX…People will truly be running NSX everywhere…remembering that as of the current 6.1.x and 6.2.x releases the NSX Manager is a beefed up version of the vShield Manager. The good news for people who are running vShield Endpoint services for Antivirus and other guest introspection tasks will be able to manage this through the Web Client.

In terms of what NSX parts need installing/upgrading from the vCNS bits, you only need to perform a Host Preparation and Guest Introspection install. There is no need to run NSX Controllers or configure VXLAN in order to run Endpoint services…if you want to be able to run those NSX features you will need to request specific NSX edition keys to suit your requirements.

For a complete rundown on NSX-v Licensing Edition features click here.

References:

http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/nsx/6.2.3/releasenotes_nsx_vsphere_623.html