The Myth of Lossless vMotion

As a response to my Live vMotion into VMware-on-AWS Cloud blog post Nico Vilbert pointed me to his blog post explaining the details of cross-Atlantic vMotion into AWS.

Today I will not go into yet another rant pointing out all the things that can go wrong, but focus on a minor detail: “no ping was dropped in the process.”

The vMotion is instantaneous and lossless myth has been propagated since the early days of vMotion when sysadmins proudly demonstrated what seemed to be pure magic to amazed audiences… including the now-traditional terminal window running ping and not losing a single packet.

Automation Story: Network Diagrams

Anne Baretta got pretty far in his automation story: after starting with configuration templates and storing network inventory into a database, he tackled the web UI. What’s next? How about a few auto-generated network diagrams?

Notes

• We covered the magic behind network diagrams in our network automation course.
• For whatever reason, I see numerous networking engineers focusing on generating useful network diagrams. Wasn’t that problem solved ages ago with miraculous single-pane-of-glass network management software?

Automation Story: Network Diagrams

Anne Baretta got pretty far in his automation story: after starting with configuration templates and storing network inventory into a database, he tackled the web UI. What’s next? How about a few auto-generated network diagrams?

Notes

• We covered the magic behind network diagrams in our network automation course.
• For whatever reason, I see numerous networking engineers focusing on generating useful network diagrams. Wasn’t that problem solved ages ago with miraculous single-pane-of-glass network management software?

Worth Reading: Do We Need Regulation for IoT Security?

A pretty good summary of the topic by Drew Conry-Murray: the market is not going to correct itself, it’s very hard to hold manufacturers or developers accountable for security defects in their products, and nothing much will change until someone dies.

And just in case you wonder how "innovative forwarding-looking disruptive knowledge-focused" companies could produce such ****, I can highly recommend The Stupidity Paradox.

Worth Reading: Do We Need Regulation for IoT Security?

A pretty good summary of the topic by Drew Conry-Murray: the market is not going to correct itself, it’s very hard to hold manufacturers or developers accountable for security defects in their products, and nothing much will change until someone dies.

And just in case you wonder how "innovative forwarding-looking disruptive knowledge-focused" companies could produce such ****, I can highly recommend The Stupidity Paradox.

Video: End-to-End Latency Is Not Zero

After the “shocking” revelation that a network can never be totally reliable, I addressed another widespread lack of common sense: due to laws of physics, the client-server latency is never zero (and never even close to what a developer gets from the laptop’s loopback interface).

Video: End-to-End Latency Is Not Zero

After the “shocking” revelation that a network can never be totally reliable, I addressed another widespread lack of common sense: due to laws of physics, the client-server latency is never zero (and never even close to what a developer gets from the laptop’s loopback interface).

Upcoming Events and Webinars (March 2020)

Starting with a short message to anyone interested in our on-site events in Switzerland: on March 10th we’re running our first 2020 workshop, focusing on Docker and containers.

I totally reworked the material, adding tons of new Docker networking examples (including deep dive into iptables) and a few fun things like building an Ansible container, or starting the whole NetBox stack with a single command. Even if you don’t plan to deploy containers in your production network, you might drop by just for that part.

And now for the upcoming webinars:

Upcoming Events and Webinars (March 2020)

Starting with a short message to anyone interested in our on-site events in Switzerland: on March 10th we’re running our first 2020 workshop, focusing on Docker and containers.

I totally reworked the material, adding tons of new Docker networking examples (including deep dive into iptables) and a few fun things like building an Ansible container, or starting the whole NetBox stack with a single command. Even if you don’t plan to deploy containers in your production network, you might drop by just for that part.

And now for the upcoming webinars:

The Myth of Scaling From On-Premises Data Center into a Public Cloud

Every now and then someone tries to justify the “wisdom” of migrating VMs from on-premises data center into a public cloud (without renumbering them) with the idea of “scaling out into the public cloud” aka “cloud bursting”. My usual response: this is another vendor marketing myth that works only in PowerPoint.

To be honest, that statement is too harsh. You can easily scale your application into a public cloud assuming that:

The Myth of Scaling From On-Premises Data Center into a Public Cloud

Every now and then someone tries to justify the “wisdom” of migrating VMs from on-premises data center into a public cloud (without renumbering them) with the idea of “scaling out into the public cloud” aka “cloud bursting”. My usual response: this is another vendor marketing myth that works only in PowerPoint.

To be honest, that statement is too harsh. You can easily scale your application into a public cloud assuming that:

Pragmatic EVPN Designs

While running the Using VXLAN And EVPN To Build Active-Active Data Centers workshop in early December 2019 I got the usual set of questions about using BGP as the underlay routing protocol in EVPN fabrics, and the various convoluted designs like IBGP-over-EBGP or EBGP-between-loopbacks over directly-connected-EBGP that some vendors love so much.

I got a question along the same lines from one of the readers of my latest EPVN rant who described how convoluted it is to implement the design he’d like to use with the gear he has (I won’t name any vendor because hazardous chemical substances get mentioned when I do).

Pragmatic EVPN Designs

While running the Using VXLAN And EVPN To Build Active-Active Data Centers workshop in early December 2019 I got the usual set of questions about using BGP as the underlay routing protocol in EVPN fabrics, and the various convoluted designs like IBGP-over-EBGP or EBGP-between-loopbacks over directly-connected-EBGP that some vendors love so much.

I got a question along the same lines from one of the readers of my latest EPVN rant who described how convoluted it is to implement the design he’d like to use with the gear he has (I won’t name any vendor because hazardous chemical substances get mentioned when I do).

Automation Story: Add a Web UI

Imagine you followed the steps taken by Anne Baretta and stored network inventory into a database. What could you do with that information (apart from creating reports)? How about adding a web UI to help less-skilled network operators perform automated tasks?

Notes

• While we won’t tell you how to build a web UI in our network automation course, we will tell you how to build a system out of numerous components (and what components you might need).

Automation Story: Add a Web UI

Imagine you followed the steps taken by Anne Baretta and stored network inventory into a database. What could you do with that information (apart from creating reports)? How about adding a web UI to help less-skilled network operators perform automated tasks?

Notes

• While we won’t tell you how to build a web UI in our network automation course, we will tell you how to build a system out of numerous components (and what components you might need).

Video: FRRouting Configuration and Performance Optimizations

After introducing FRRouting architecture, Donald Sharp dived deep into configuration and performance optimizations, including asynchronous data plane, next hop groups, and commit-and-rollback.

Video: FRRouting Configuration and Performance Optimizations

After introducing FRRouting architecture, Donald Sharp dived deep into configuration and performance optimizations, including asynchronous data plane, next hop groups, and commit-and-rollback.

Live vMotion into VMware-on-AWS Cloud

Considering VMware’s enrapturement with vMotion the following news (reported by Salman Naqvi in a comment to my blog post) was clearly inevitable:

I was surprised to learn that LIVE vMotion is supported between on-premise and Vmware on AWS Cloud

What’s more interesting is how did they manage to do it?

Live vMotion into VMware-on-AWS Cloud

Considering VMware’s enrapturement with vMotion the following news (reported by Salman Naqvi in a comment to my blog post) was clearly inevitable:

I was surprised to learn that LIVE vMotion is supported between on-premise and Vmware on AWS Cloud

What’s more interesting is how did they manage to do it?

Fruit Drops and Packet Drops

Urban legends claim that Sir Isaac Newton started thinking about gravity when an apple dropped on his head. Regardless of its origins, his theory successfully predicted planetary motions and helped us get people to the moon… there was just this slight problem with Mercury’s precession.

Likewise, his laws of motion worked wonderfully until someone started crashing very small objects together at very high speeds, or decided to see what happens when you give electrons two slits to go through.

Then there was the tiny problem of light traveling at the same speed in all directions… even on objects moving in different directions.