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Put away the computer and take a relaxing trip

I have been so busy I haven’t had time to put any articles together in quiet some time.  I know many if not all of you have the same issue.  Never enough time in a day to do all the things you need to get done and the back log just keeps piling up.  Every once in a while you need to just get away and reboot.  Take some time and do something peaceful and relaxing.

If you are like me and you like to scuba dive I want to invite you to step away and enjoy a great time diving the beautiful reefs of Bonaire.  Bonaire is just an all around awesome place to dive.  If you have never been this is more a demand then a request because you simply have to explore the over 100 different dive locations on Bonaire.

One of my favorite things about Bonaire is although you can do boat dives, you don’t have to.  Bonaire offers 24/7 hour shore diving.  You simply pull up, gear up, and get in the water.  I can also say of all the sites I have dove I have not found one that wasn’t amazing in its own right.

So if you enjoy diving and need to plan a getaway and leave work behind come join us on our Bonaire trip in February 2018.  I dare you.

https://www.westshorescuba.com/community/events/viewevent/182-bonaire-2018

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VMware vSphere 6.5 and NSX, customer running NSX don’t upgrade to vSphere 6.5 just yet

Loving the list of new features in vSPjere 6.5?  Thinking about digging in and upgrading your lab or other environment?  Well if that environment is running NSX you will want to wait just a little longer.  vSphere 6.5 is currently not compatible with NSX including 6.1.x and 6.2.x.  See KB 2147548 for more details.

Now I have nothing official to say on this, but as you might expect I’m sure this will be resolved once a new version of NSX drops.  We have all been there before where we just got the GA announcement of vSphere and rushed to upgrade our virtual labs and oh wait crap, NSX is not supported.  This is nothing new this has been the case for last few releases if you recall.  You may remember reading this article about vSPhere 6.



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Amazon and VMware better together….

I’m sure you have all heard the news about the VMware and Amazon partnership.  I’ve been getting loads of questions from people and it seems that their are misconceptions on what exactly this means short term.  Here is some of what I have heard and some clarification as to what it really is.

The offering will be VMware’s hypervisor running nested on top of AWS. – False

The offering is actually the vSphere hypervisor running on bear metal running inside Amazon’s data center.

I want AWS features, not just vSphere in another datacenter.  I don’t see any AWS value or features with this offering – False

The machines running on vSphere in the AWS datacenter can take advantage of lots of AWS offerings such as storage, database offerings, security, analytics, and from what I understand 70 other services.  While it’s not the ability to use the AWS API to provision workloads this is still huge.  This of projects you may have that utilize AWS services interacting with workloads running in your own physical data center and the what you have to do you secure those interactions.  Now you have the ability to run the workloads inside the same data center as those services greatly reducing the complexities of securing those communications.

It’s great but what about NSX?

In the offering vSphere, NSX, and vSAN are all available.  I can’t speak to how the cost and licensing works with regards to these, but they are all available.

When will this be generally available?

It is expected to be available sometime late H2 2017.

As more and more info becomes available it will become even more apparent how much value this will add to the enterprise datacenter.  Most organizations today have a disconnect when it comes to their on-prem and off-prem workloads.  Having a standardizes infrastructure, standardized process, and standardized integrations can only lead to less complex and more manageable infrastructure.  As more information becomes available that can be shared I will certainly be focusing more on this area and once possible I will certainly be providing some insight and sneak peaks into this great new partnership.

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VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Cross Cloud Services–VMworld 2016 Keynote

Many of you are at VMworld 2016 and had the opportunity to be at the Keynote Live this morning.  However there are those of us that are not at VMworld this year so I decided to put together some highlights from this mornings keynote.

The big theme for the keynote this year was the announcement of  VMware Cloud Foundation and Cross Cloud Services.   Although I say too much about Cloud Foundation beyond what what was discussed in this mornings keynote I think the below slide really helps shed some light.  Although you will hear Cloud Foundation compared to Nutanix, I see it as more than just converged infrastructure.  I see it more as a converged cloud.  If you look at the let side of the below image you can see that VMware Cloud Foundation includes, Private Cloud as well as VMware vCloud air, and the IBM cloud.  The benefit here is all of these environments are built on top of VMware technology.  To the right you see the Non-VMware-Based Clouds which includes Amazon, Azure, and Google CP.  These would be what’s part of the VMware Cross Cloud Services.

 

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Platypus Project Update

platypusOver the weekend Roman, Grant, John and I released a significant update to the platypus project, which is essentially a very simple and elegant way to provide a Swagger based documentation of several VMware Products.  This project started out by providing a quick way to consume the vRealize Automation 7 API, but it has grown a healthy set of legs.

One of the goals of the project was to take publicly available specifications and make them consumable and adaptable by the larger community.

So,  what’s new? Everything.

  • Flexibility: When you run the docker container, there is the option to provide variables for Product Name and Product Version.
  • Product Support: The updated platypus project now includes vRealize Operations 6.2,  vRealize Orchestrator 7.0, and NSX 6.2.
  • Host Config: The host variable now provides the ability to input the hostname of an instance of the VMware Product in question (preferably a test/dev instance) and issue the REST API calls.

To get your hands dirty with the NSX version of Platypus, just issue the following command:

docker run –name platypus –rm -p 80:8080 -e PRODUCT=”nsx” -e VERSION=”6.2″ vmware/platypus

Interested in checking the platypus project out? Find out more at https://github.com/vmware/platypus.  If you are interested in contributing to the project, simply issue a PR.

Please leave your feedback or comments below, I’d love to hear from you.

cloudcanuck.ca / twitter / facebook

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NSX 6.2.1 Release

If you are looking to try out vRA7 integration with NSX make sure you upgrade your NSX deployment. This update include support for the NSX 1.0.3 vRO plugin needed for vRA integration.

New in 6.2.1

The 6.2.1 release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

  • 6.1.5 fixes: Release includes the same critical fixes as NSX-vSphere 6.1.5 content.
  • Introduced new ‘show control-cluster network ipsec status’ command that allows uses to inspect the Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) state.
  • Connectivity status: NSX Manager user interface now shows the connectivity status of the NSX Controller cluster.
  • Support for vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for NSX 1.0.3: With NSX 6.2.1 release, NSX-vRO plugin version 1.0.3 is introduced for use with vRealize Automation 7.0.0. This plugin includes fixes that improve performance when vRealize Automation 7.0 uses NSX for vSphere 6.2.1 as a networking and security end point.
  • Starting in 6.2.1, NSX Manager queries each Controller node in the cluster to get the connection information between that controller and the other controllers in the cluster.
    This is provided in the output of the NSX REST API (“GET https://[NSX-MANAGER-IP-ADDRESS]/api/2.0/vdn/controller” command), which now shows the peer connection status among the controller nodes. If NSX Manager finds the connection between any two controller nodes is broken, a system event is generated to alert the user.
  • Service Composer now exposes an API that enables users to configure auto creation of Firewall drafts for Service Composer workflows.
    This setting can be turned on/off using REST API and the changes can be saved across reboot. When disabled, no draft is created in the Distributed Firewall (DFW) for policy workflows. This limits the number of drafts that are auto-created in the system and provides better performance.

NSX-vSphere 6.2.1 Release Notes:

http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/nsx/6.2.1/releasenotes_nsx_vsphere_621.html

NSX-vSphere 6.2.1 Landing Page:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info/slug/networking_security/vmware_nsx/6_x

NSX-vSphere Product Documentation:

https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/nsx_pubs.html

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VMworld2015 Hands on Labs Open today!!!

VMworld2015 Hands On Labs open today!

Don’t forget to stop by the Hands On Labs and check out some of this years awesome labs that are available.  Last night we had the lab burn in and they are open to day.  There are labs for just about everything you can imagine.  Not sure what lab is right for you, that’s fine stop by and chat with some subject matter experts that will help you determine which lab is the right fit for you.    There are roughly 350 terminals in the HOL this year along with a customer connect area where you can BYOD to connect.  If that was not enough there are 4 expert led breakout rooms where you can reserve a spot and attend expert led sessions on the various technologies.

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VMware – NSX and Cisco ACI

There is not really much I can add to the debate on NSX vs ACI except to share my opinion on a few things.

Let’s look at the world as it is today.  It is a virtual world.  At least 80% of workloads in most datacenters today are virtualized. So that leaves roughly 20% of workloads as physical.  How often do physical workloads move to different servers, racks, datacenters etc?  Not very often right?  You rack them, you cable them, you plug them in, you configure the port(s) and that is basically where it lives for the rest of it days.  Any rules or policies you need for those machines get created and that’s it.

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VMware NSX – What is with the Cisco or NSX debate?

Why is there a perception that you can use Cisco or NSX?  If you perform a simple google search you will find many articles that aim to answer the question of Cisco vs. NSX?  This is like saying HP or vSPhere?  It doesn’t make any sense.  Cisco and NSX can co-exist in a datacenter it’s not a one or the other proposition.  Let’s face it Cisco owns the network layer in most datacenters and they should, they make damn good networking hardware.  But that’s just it.  They make hardware much like HP, Dell, and IBM make hardware.  It has limitations.

Don’t get me wrong hardware is a necessary evil for obvious reasons for all types of  virtualization whether it be computer, networking, or storage.  I just don’t understand the big debate regarding Cisco vs. NSX.  It’s really very simple.  Keep your existing Cisco hardware and get more out of it with NSX.  I hear many making an argument that network virtualization is not needed because you cannot consolidate multiple switches or routers into one.  This baffles me as well.  If you support this argument or feel it is valid you don’t understand the value of Network virtualization

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VMware NSX 6.1.3 Released Today

For all of you that have been patiently waiting for NSX 6.1.3 so you can upgrade to vSphere 6, your wait is over!  VMware has relaeased NSX 6.1.3 today and it is now live for download.  On top of support for vSPhere 6 it also includes a number od security and bug fixes details can be found in the release notes.

NSX vSphere 6.1.3 introduces the following features:

  • Dynamic routing protocols are supported on sub-interfaces.
  • ECMP and Logical Firewall are supported at the same time with logical routing.

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