Before You Install
Before installing a GigaVUE-VM node, ensure the following each ESXi host that will be managed:
| 1. | Install VMware vSphere ESXi Standard Version 5.x or greater for NSX-V, and Version 6.5 or greater for NSX-T on hardware that meets minimum requirements. |
Note: VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus is required for vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) deployments.
| 2. | Install Virtual Switch. You can use either vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) or vSphere Standard Switch (vSS) available with vSphere. |
| vSphere Distributed Switch. For versions, refer to VMware ESXi System Requirements. |
Note: The installation wizard does not prevent you from installing GigaVUE-VM on an ESXi host without a virtual switch installed. However, the virtual switch is required for GigaVUE-VM to access traffic.
| 3. | Set the MTU larger than the largest packet expect from the virtual environment or enable fragmentation. |
To transport packets of interest from the virtual environment to physical devices, GigaVUE-VM uses a tunneled network connection to a GigaSMART card on a physical appliance. (For information about the tunnel network, refer to Configure Tunnel Endpoint.) Either the MTU of this tunnel must be larger than the size of the largest packet of interest that you expect to forward from the virtual environment to a physical appliance, or you must enable fragmentation. (For more information about fragmentation, refer to Fragmentation.)
If your existing virtual networks use an MTU of 1500 bytes, and if you choose to increase the MTU for the entire network path of the tunnel, you must increase the tunnel MTU to 1600 bytes. This increase must take place on all of the network components from the virtual switch to the GigaSMART card. For NSX-T the MTU is required to be 1600 bytes or greater.
Failure to either increase the tunnel path MTU or use fragmentation will result in packets of interest being dropped by your network infrastructure before they can reach the GigaSMART card. Neither GigaVUE‑FM nor GigaVUE-VM will indicate that these packets are being dropped.
