VMworld 2013 in review NSX - TechTalk Episode 25
Transcript
ke from virtualized geek.com with another installment of virtualized Geeks Tech talk today is the 27th of August and this is the end of VM world for me VM world has one more day left but unfortunately I have to go back to work and actually justify going to conferences like this you know uh one of the major them that I got out of VM world this year obviously was NXX VMware was very heavy on their Network virtualization platform NXX uh everything from software defined networking to uh
vsan all their new announcements all of their Cloud initiatives all had tied in the theme of NXX uh I spent a lot of time talking to folks throughout the conference a lot of VMware customers uh talking about their excitement uh around NSX uh there's a lot the to discuss around it when it came to the customers one whether or not they believed in the solution which a majority of them actually did and two uh their questions around what exactly the solution will do for their environment
and if uh their environment is ready to accept uh in itct from not just a technical perspective but also from an operations perspective a lot of the crowd at VM world is you usually Falls within the server administrator role or the uh uh um virtualization admin which usually centers around um server virtualization s86 virtualization while the network is normally controlled by a different uh group of people had a very Dynamic conversation with a um Enterprise architect that had very mixed feelings around NXX and it kind
of captures I think both the technical challenges and the operational challenges behind NSX um he was uh really passionate about the idea that uh vmware's approach to network virtualization probably wasn't the right approach he believed that there's need for for Network abstraction for Network virtualization in general he just didn't necessarily believe that it was vmware's uh place in to provide that actual infrastructure so the creation of open switch of network hypervisors he felt that a more balanced approach similar to how VMware has approached Network virtualization
pre the Nera um purchase would be the Catalyst for or uh their foundation for providing uh Network or virtualization for for the industry so basically he was looking for uh VMware to continue their use of apis that created the Cisco 1000 V to continue to basically create uh Network function devices versus creating a network hypervisor which goes to own the entire network his main argument was probably one of the vmware's main challenges which is getting the entire industry on board with uh the NSX Vision using
protocols such as VXL to do cool things one of the cool things I saw at the show was F5 has a load balancer that will load balance using VXL load balance um a note that's on a NSX virtual port with a note that's on a physical uh Network Port that that is a true integration of part partnership between the hardware vendor and a software vendor he was very disappointed this VMware customer that there was no announcement that Cisco was a partner uh in the initial deployment
of NXX via the open standard protocols such as VX land he felt that since Cisco has such a large footprint within the data center it's almost impossible to make a new disruptive technology without V without Cisco being completely on board and supporting the effort he believes in his data center is primarily Cisco if he wants to deploy NXX does that mean that he has to go to a juniper or a wristed um base solution who are both uh partners with uh VMware and their NSX launch
I don't know it's a pretty good question uh I kind of had a different slant on that that got me to thinking kind of about Cisco and the position that they're in obviously the network is going to be virtualized it may not be NXX we'll wait to see uh Folks at VMware Martin Credo vmware's uh Network CTO was very passionate about uh his vision for virtualized networks but uh obviously Cisco isn't too excited about it and recent in their recent layoffs of 4,000 people even though
they had uh strong profits this past quarter got me to thinking are they positioning themselves for to be a leaner organization not just because there's going to be less networking devices sold but the type of devices that they're going to sell are going to be different are they looking to create a environment in which their uh the network hypervisor or the virtualized network runs on Cisco gear Cisco is a uh is a hardware company they're not going to change from being a hardware company they've kind
of doubled down in Hardware become becoming one of the biggest server vendors in the world the world so my thinking is that VM uh that Cisco will uh come up with a solution that allows them to keep their Market uh the the strangle hold they have on the Enterprise Market by providing Network virtualization but Network virtualization that runs on their Hardware we already see this kind of in their um sdn play with their programing their programmable Network how they've embrace sdn from a uh from the
ability to to open up apis to make the network programable but not by putting the um the flow the flow control on x86 servers but by creating uh apis into their Network to give uh OpenFlow type capability flow control type capability from applications via their uh programming API so recap very exciting VM world this year uh not necessarily because of all of the cool announcements around vmware's products but because of all the excitement around uh Network virtualization which I believe is the pretty much the Green
Field or the next area of true uh expansion and virtualization and technology in general specifically within the infrastructure you know I have a lot of videos uh topics around some of the stuff that we talked about that I talked about at VMware specifically open stack next week's uh video I plan to talk about uh PayPal and their imple implementation of openstack on their VMware platform and some of their challenges until then uh subscribe to uh my YouTube channel like the videos visit us on virtual.com and
I'll talk to you next week thanks
