VMware NSX - TechTalk 29
Transcript
hi welcome to episode 29 of virtualized geeks tech talk we're going to talk about one of you guys favorite uh topics literally whenever i talk about virtualized networking uh i get two to three times more views so you guys have kind of spoken you like to talk about virtualized networking and i think the timing couldn't be perfect when we're uh correlating this episode of virtualized week's tech talk with the release of vmware's nsx uh network hypervisor so just a little history uh vmware's nsx hypervisor is
really nothing new in a sense of network hypervisors uh specifically it's uh more of the uh legacy nicera technology but really uh i'd like to say battle hardened or battle tested or hardened for uh or specifically designed to be compatible with all of vmware's vsphere suite so i've gotten in quite a few digs um uh friendly digs on vmware and uh martine casita over there at vmware who's who i consider probably one the smartest guys in the industry especially when it comes to software-defined networking i've
gotten in quite a few digs on kind of the release schedule or the lack of release schedule for nsx i've been anxiously awaiting the release of nsx ever since uh vmware announced it prior to this year's uh vmworld san francisco back right after uh last year's vmworld vmware made a big announcement about nsx and the upcoming technologies uh vmware again announced it at vmware vmworld 2013 in san francisco and i'm glad to say that uh it is finally released uh and this release was announced as
part of vmworld 2013 barcelona i plan on doing a lot of coverage in general over nxx both technical and non-technical today we're going to have a great uh non-technical conversation about some of the practical challenges that nsx brings to the enterprise i think one of the uh most interesting things about nsx is kind of the cultural issues that vmware uh brings to the plate when they with the size of their market when it comes to virtualization and they bring in an adjacent solution like network virtualization
into the enterprise it's something that practically can't be ignored there's been plenty plenty of software-defined networking plays in the past one of the more noticeable ones has been m2mi i believe named the company that oracle has been teaming up to provide uh software-defined uh networks in the past that just basically haven't taken off hasn't gotten a lot of traction if you ask network administrators uh uh virtualization administrators on you know namie three or four the four three two uh network virtualization plays um i think they'd
be pretty hard pressed to come up with someone other than vmware and their nsx product vmware uh at vmworld they talked about how much interest there was in nsx the crowd of basically server and virtualization administrators were very excited about nsx when i talked through to uh folks in the crowd a lot of vmware customers i think there was a lot of uncertainty about around what exactly intersex was but they knew that it brought virtualization to the network i think this is a great time to
do a quick recap over uh what the uh vmware's nsx product brings to the table uh basically it brings the concept of network virtualization or network hypervisor to uh the network to the physical network so just like in the virtual network or a virtual uh server space we can bring virtual instances of hardware to physical server hardware we can bring virtual uh network devices to the physical network so just like in the virtual server space just because you know i magically made 45 vms run on
a physical host doesn't mean that no one will need network administrators just i'm sorry server administrators i in some cases need more network administrator administrators because i've added more uh server workloads to the environment the same way the same thing i think happens with nxx and i think one of the big challenges that vmware has in selling nsx to the overall enterprise there's a lot of excitement uh again within the vmware community itself over nsx the ideal that a network administrator who has i'm sorry a
server administrator that has a license of enterprise plus in nxx they can spin up unlimited uh network overlays on top of their existing network without even talking to a network engineer network administrator is pretty exciting stuff i mean there's if we think about it from a practical sense uh when it comes to cloud initiatives those initiatives are first brought to the virtualization team the virtualization team needs to build a coalition um in order to have a successful cloud project they have to build a relationship with
the uh with the network team the storage team and of course the server hardware team to be able to orchestrate the network in a way or orchestrate the infrastructure in a way in which they can meet their cloud-based slas when i've talked to friends um about kind of their challenges in implementing cloud one of the number one challenges is sl lays around the physical network and provisioning whether it's public ips private ips network segments multiple uh zones for a server that's in multiple zones that's almost
always the hold up and provisioning the network part of the cloud not to be a knock on the network team if you've ever managed something as complex as an enterprise network giving the keys to the network to a team outside of your department is a very scary proposition because i've seen basic firewall rules failed uh port mirroring very simple things take down a whole enterprise network and bring down and bring up operations to a screening hall so i understand the consternation that network engineers would have
in giving over the power to provision networks to a team outside of their uh outside of their bubble basically so nsx kind of promises to solve that problem by creating overlays and separating the network the virtual network or even your cloud network from your physical network which makes that change control and configuration management issue at least on the physical network go go away but i think this is kind of a temporary uh illusion or fix because just like we know uh virtualization didn't fix server sprawl
it actually made server sprawl worse because you have the ability to create more uh workloads than you actually needed you eliminated the physical limitation uh that was natural with the physical uh server footprint you can only uh create as many physical servers as you or you're going to create as many windows and linux workloads as you have servers when you take away that limitation i think you introduce the real trouble of service brawl or just like uh when a business unit engages a cloud sas cloud
provider for a sas solution when that solution outgrows the capability of that shadow i t that was created though that responsibility comes back ultimately onto the it team to deliver the solution so with that is the same i think challenge with network virtualization uh that it needs to be a partnership between uh the cloud management team or virtualization team in the networking team to create a configuration management program uh operations program basically around managing virtual network devices these network devices still need to get managed and
the folks managing the devices have to have the necessary skill to do that and that normally lies within the networking team i don't think the enterprise has gotten to the point yet that a virtualization engineer uh has the depth of knowledge to manage windows workloads the virtualization infrastructure uh linux workloads and uh network uh devices ver be them virtualized or non-virtual virtual lives so that goes back kind of to what vmware's challenge is when it comes to adopting nxx into the enterprise uh i think the
network administrators are sold there's no arguing kind of i think when i talk to network administrators kind of their pain point has always been network provisioning and if you give that capability directly to them hey you know what they they won't complain at all they'll embrace the the ability to provision networks i think the problem comes in when they have their first big problem that goes beyond their skill set within their uh virtual network to troubleshoot and they need to pull in help from the networking
team is where there's going to be problem or when they're or when these overlay networks create issues for the physical network that the networking team wasn't prepared to handle or address becomes a problem so when it comes to kind of educating and marketing nsx the problem isn't marketing to vmware's current customer base it's you know going into this green field of the network manager's office the developer's office office all the parts of the it operations that will leverage truly leverage virtualized networking selling them on the
concept that one is needed two that it doesn't add the complexity that uh that's kind of perceived out there and three that vmware is the right vendor to select for you know you know i wrote the article on the comparing uh vmware's uh nsx solution to uh cisco's aci solution which is their sdn play so vmware will eventually have to compete against cisco when it comes to their aci sdn solution and they have to go in and fight an uphill battle to convince the uh the
team that's managing a cisco network that a software-based solution or a software first solution is the way to go versus cisco's hardware first solution so again i'm really excited about network virtualization in general i'm very happy that vmware has released nsx i'm anxious to get it in my own lab uh hopefully i'll be able to get it into uh some type of uh next uh vmware workstation lab where uh for those of us who are on the shoestring budget can get to play around with uh
of you know some fairly complex network uh concepts within a single workstation environment pretty cool stuff and i'm really interested interested to see the feedback from the enterprise when it comes to implementing a very cross-platform solution such as nxx across uh both the physical network and uh the virtualization uh uh uh the virtualization world uh again if you like the video i highly suggest that you subscribe to our youtube channel and visit us as always you can find all of our material at virtualizedgeek.com talk to
you on in networks in next week's installment of virtualized geeks tech talk thanks you
