VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere is the new name of NSX-v and NSX-t for the on-prem case, and version 6 is actually referring to the specific edition for VMware vSphere that use the vCenter Server UI has the main UI also for all the NSX part. There are other NSX products, but VMware has just announced a new minor version for the vSphere related product: NSX Data Center for vSphere v6.4.2 it’s out.

The release notes describe all the new features and improvement of this release:

Networking and Edge Services

• Multicast Support: Adds ability to configure L3 IPv4 multicast on Distributed Logical Router and Edge Service Gateway through the support of IGMPv2 and PIM Sparse Mode. The minimum required vSphere version for multicast routing is vSphere 6.5 U2.
• Default Limit of MAC identifiers: Increases from 2048 to 4096
• Hardware VTEP: Added multi PTEP cluster capability to facilitate environments with multiple vCenters

Security Services

• Context-Aware Firewall: Additional Layer 7 Application Context Support (EPIC, MSSQL, BLAST AppIDs)
• Firewall Rule Hit Count:  Monitor rule usage and easily identify unused rules for clean-up
• Firewall Section Locking:  Enables multiple security administrators to work concurrently on the firewall
• NSX Application Rule Manager: Improved scale to 100 vNICs per session, further simplifying the process of creating security groups and whitelisting firewall rules for existing applications.

NSX User Interface

• VMware NSX – Functionality Updates for vSphere Client (HTML): The following VMware NSX features are now available through the vSphere Client: TraceFlow, User Domains, Audit Logs, Events & Tasks. For a list of supported functionality, please see VMware NSX for vSphere UI Plug-in Functionality in vSphere Client.

Operations and Troubleshooting

• Authentication & Authorization: Introduces 2 new roles (Network Engineer and Security Engineer). Adds ability to enable/disable basic authentication.
• NSX Scale Dashboard: Provides visibility into 25 new metrics. Adds ability to edit usage warning thresholds and filter for objects exceeding limits.
• NSX Controller Cluster Settings: Specify common settings (DNS, NTP, Syslog) to apply to NSX Controller Cluster.
• Support for VM Hardware version 11 for NSX components: For new installs of NSX 6.4.2, NSX appliances (Manager, Controller, Edge, Guest Introspection) are installed with VM HW version 11. For upgrades to NSX 6.4.2, please see Upgrade Notes for further details.

The supported versions of VMware vSphere are:

• For vSphere 6.0:
  Supported: 6.0 Update 2, 6.0 Update 3
  Recommended: 6.0 Update 3. vSphere 6.0 Update 3 resolves the issue of duplicate VTEPs in ESXi hosts after rebooting vCenter server. See VMware Knowledge Base article 2144605 for more information.
• For vSphere 6.5:
  Supported: 6.5a, 6.5 Update 1, 6.5 Update 2.
  Recommended: 6.5 Update 1. vSphere 6.5 Update 1 resolves the issue of EAM failing with OutOfMemory. See VMware Knowledge Base Article 2135378 for more information.
• For vSphere 6.7
  Supported: 6.7
  Recommended: 6.7

Note: vSphere 5.5 is not supported with NSX 6.4.

For Guest Introspection for Windows, some Guest Introspection-based features require newer VMware Tools versions:

• Use VMware Tools 10.0.9 and 10.0.12 to enable the optional Thin Agent Network Introspection Driver component packaged with VMware Tools.
• Upgrade to VMware Tools 10.0.8 and later to resolve slow VMs after upgrading VMware Tools in NSX / vCloud Networking and Security (see VMware knowledge base article 2144236).
• Use VMware Tools 10.1.0 and later for Windows 10 support.
• Use VMware Tools 10.1.10 and later for Windows Server 2016 support.

Of course, the previous version of NSX may be no more supported or will be not supported soon:

• NSX for vSphere 6.1.x reached End of Availability (EOA) and End of General Support (EOGS) on January 15, 2017. (See also VMware knowledge base article 2144769.)
• NSX for vSphere 6.2.x has reached End of General Support (EOGS) as of August 20, 2018.

NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4.2 adds usability and serviceability enhancements and addresses a number of specific customer bugs. See Resolved Issues for more information.

Andrea Mauro

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.