The uplink profile is a template that defines how an N-VDS or a vDS that exists in each transport node (either host or Edge VM) connects to the physical network. Starting with VCF version 4.0, vDS is used to back the host Overlay and VLAN transport zones for both the Mgmt and VI WLDs. The uplink profile specifies:

• Uplinks to be used by the transport node
• Teaming policy that is applied to those uplinks
• VLAN used for the profile
• MTU applied to the traffic

The following table shows the different uplink profiles that are used for the VCF on VxRail SDDC solution. This can be either the single VxRail vDS or the second dedicated NSX vDS when using only two uplinks.

Table 8.              VxRail or NSX vDS with 2 uplinks - Mgmt and VI WLD Uplink Profiles

The following table shows the uplink profiles that are created when a second NSX vDS is deployed with four uplinks, this is only possible when using a second vDS.

Table 9.              Second vDS with 4 uplinks - Mgmt and VI WLD Uplink Profiles

Note: The Edge uplink profiles also include a Named Teaming policy which uses failover order for the uplink traffic, this allows traffic to be pinned to a particular uplink.

Each time a new cluster is added to an NSX-T VI WLD, a new host uplink profile is created to define the VLAN used for the host TEPs. The VLAN can be the same or different for each of the clusters.

For a single cluster VI WLD, two uplink profiles are required to complete the overall deployment of an NSX-T WLD, including the dynamic routing configuration. The host uplink profile is auto-generated when the cluster is added to the VI WLD. The edge uplink profile is created Day 2 when adding an edge cluster. This can be done from SDDC Managers using the edge cluster automation feature.