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Viewing Overlay Networks

 

Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) represents a technology that enables you to segment your networks (as VLANs do) but that also solves the scaling limitation of VLANs and provides benefits that VLANs cannot. VXLAN is often described as an overlay technology because it enables you to stretch Layer 2 connections over an intervening Layer 3 network by encapsulating (tunneling) Ethernet frames in a VXLAN packet that includes IP addresses.

The video Why Use an Overlay Network in a Data Center? presents a brief overview of the advantages of using VXLANs.

 

You can view the overlay networks in a data center by using the view overlay networks task. You can also view all the virtual machines (VMs) that are part of an overlay network using this task.

To view the overlay networks in a data center:

  1. While in Build mode with Datacenter View selected, select a data center from the View pane and click Inventory > View Overlay Networks from the Tasks pane.

    The View Overlay Networks page opens.

  2. Table 1 describes the fields that are displayed in the View Overlay Networks page.

    Table 1: View Overlay Network page Field Descriptions

    Field

    Description

    Tenant

    Name of the tenant that uses the given overlay network.

    Network Name

    Name of the overlay network.

    Tunnel Type

    Type of overlay tunnel. Network Director supports only VXLAN tunnels.

    Tunnel ID

    Unique identification number of the overlay network.

    Subnet

    Subnet assigned to the tenant.

    Gateway

    Gateway used by the overlay network

    DHCP

    Indicates whether DHCP is enabled or disabled for the overlay network.

  3. To view the VMs that are part of an overlay network, select an overlay network and click Show Virtual Machines.

    The View Virtual Machines page opens displaying all the VMs. For detailed descriptions on the fields in this page, see Viewing the Virtual Machine Inventory in a Cloud Infrastructure.

Related Documentation