What you need for this book

Primarily,we need NSX Manager,vCenter Server and ESXI Hosts with Local/remote storage.

Note that for an NSX Manager to participate in a cross-vCenter NSX deployment the following conditions are required.

Above configurations can be configured and tested even on a Nested ESXI environment ,however it is strongly not recommended to deploy it like that in a Production Environment. 

For hardware compatibility matrix, please do refer VMware HCL guide:  http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php