Roger Fortier

Author Archives: Roger Fortier

VMware to Help Customers Make Modern Apps More Secure with Acquisition of Mesh7

By Tom Gillis, SVP/GM, Networking and Security Business Unit, VMware

EDITORIAL UPDATE: On March 31, 2021 VMware officially closed its acquisition of Mesh7. The blog post originally appeared on March 18, 2021 below and has been amended to reflect that announcement.

With the VMware Virtual Cloud Network, we are delivering a modern network that understands the needs of applications and programmatically delivers connectivity and security services to meet those requirements. The ultimate result is a better experience for both users and applications. We are furthering our efforts to make modern applications more secure with our acquisition of Mesh7, which closed today. The Mesh7 technology will enable VMware to bring visibility, discovery, and better security to APIs.

So why is this important?

Customers are driving app modernization to shed the legacy of monolithic applications, to free IT and developers from single, rigid environments, and to make every service, every team, and every business more agile. Modern applications require reliable connectivity, dynamic service discovery, and the ability to automate changes quickly without disruption as they extend across multi-cloud environments. Security teams and operators need better visibility into application behavior and overall security posture, and the developer experience needs to lead to Continue reading

Progressive Dutch Municipality Protects Citizen Data and Meets Compliance with VMware NSX

Progressive Dutch Municipality Protects Citizen Data Summary: Municipality of Zoetermeer implements Zero-Trust model with VMware NSX-enabled micro-segmentation for advanced security inside data centers. Zoetermeer follows the Dutch BIG (Baseline Information Security Dutch Municipalities) regulations Zoetermeer is a modern, fast-growing municipality in the province of South Holland. It provides local services such as water supply, sewage and garbage disposal to around 125,000... Read more →

Progressive Dutch Municipality Protects Citizen Data and Meets Compliance with VMware NSX

Summary: Municipality of Zoetermeer implements Zero-Trust model with VMware NSX-enabled micro-segmentation for advanced security inside data centers. Zoetermeer follows the Dutch BIG (Baseline Information Security Dutch Municipalities) regulations

Zoetermeer is a modern, fast-growing municipality in the province of South Holland. It provides local services such as water supply, sewage and garbage disposal to around 125,000 residents. As a forward-thinking organization, the municipality of Zoetermeer recognizes that the increasing volume of cyber attacks against organizations today has shown that traditional, perimeter-centric security models are no longer effective.

The municipality responded by working with VMware partner ON2IT IT Services on a solution that wouldn’t treat everything inside the network as trusted. Zoetermeer deployed VMware NSX® network virtualization to facilitate a Zero Trust security model. This Zero Trust model is enabled by the unique micro-segmentation capabilities of VMware NSX.  Zoetermeer is now compartmentalizing different segments of its network and applying automated, fine-grained security policies to individual applications.

“The municipality of Zoetermeer is committed to delivering digital services to our citizens, and also digital tools to enable the best experience for our employees,” said Mr. Van Gaalen, IT Manager, Municipality of Zoetermeer. “But security must remain paramount. Thanks to VMware, we can Continue reading

VMware NSX Unplugged: Networking Field Day (#NFD15)

Being a product of the 90’s, one of my favorite past times was MTV’s “Unplugged” series. Whether it was Pearl Jam, or 10,000 Maniacs, or Eric Clapton, there was something about the acoustic, raw, uncut nature of the show that drew me in and made me look at  my favorite bands in a new way.

This is much  the same experience we had recently here at VMware, as the folks from Gestalt IT brought Networking Field Day’s traveling band of  IT enthusiasts to our Palo Alto campus. What ensued was 4+ hours of insight, illumination, witty banter, and from time to time, downright theoretical disagreements about things as simple as semantics and nomenclature.

But out of it all came a great show – which just like with MTV Unplugged – was ultimately all that mattered.  So grab your favorite beverage and snack, put on your stereophonic headgear, and listen to the VMware Team as they walk through VMware’s networking strategy, demos and product direction.

VMware NSX Vision and Product Overview with Milin Desai

VMware NSX Technology Overview with Ray Budavari

VMware NSX Automation with Ray Budavari

VMware Security with NSX Micro-Segmentation with Wade Holmes

VMware Day 2 Operations with vRealize Network Insight Continue reading

Latest Packet Pushers Podcast Offers a New Perspective on Networking

What’s more likely to spawn change and innovation in networking? A highly-concentrated team working on a small project, or a multi-disciplinary team working on a massive project? Multiple small teams working on 100’s of projects around the globe, or one big massive team banking on a single idea? These questions and more are posed by Bruce Davie, the recently appointed CTO for Asia Pacific and Japan at VMware, and a long time contributor, collaborator, and friend of the Packet Pushers (Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks).

In a brand new Packet Pushers podcast, Bruce, Greg and Ethan take you along for an in-depth look at various networking approaches, and the changes in store for networking as a whole Hear how networking will continue to evolve: namely, how distributed application architectures and other factors are driving big-time industry shifts. Every topic is fair game, and these networking stalwarts aren’t afraid of challenging status quo thought processes to uncover new theories. So, prepare yourself for a lively discussion and debate that transcends the present, and heads straight into the future of networking.

Take a listen!

For those who haven’t already hurried to plug in, here’s a preview of a couple topic areas Continue reading

VMware NSX News You Can Use – January 9, 2017

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s the first NSX News You Can Use of 2017.

  • In his round-up of the “10 Coolest Software-Defined Networking Technologies of 2016,” CRN’s Mark Haranas features NSX, referring to the technology as popular because of its hardware agnosticism and strong security use case through micro-segmentation.
  • TechTarget Contributor Brian Kirsch details the newly launched vExpert NSX program. He notes the program builds on the success of ourthe vExpert loyalty program, and that the program could stimulate customer interest in VMware’s networking and security offering.
  • In an interview conducted last year with Fr. Robert Ballecer of TWiT’s This Week in Enterprise Tech program, Guido Appenzeller about how VMware “took the art of virtualization and turned it into something that is commonplace” through NSX.

Top VMware NSX News

VMware vForum Live is Coming to Toronto on 11/9 & Houston on 11/17!

Attention IT professionals – want to discover the benefits of network virtualization, mobility, and cloud? You can at VMware vForum Live! Join our experts in-person for an interactive, all-day event that will take you through technical deep dives of VMware solutions. Sign up today for vForum Live in Toronto on Nov 9th or sign up for vForum Live in Houston on Nov 17th now!

vForum Live is your chance to collaborate with peers, interact with VMware experts and receive actionable advice on how you can simplify your IT and deliver an effective cloud strategy. From keynote speeches presented by the industry’s heaviest hitters to specific VMware solution breakout sessions, you’ll get to hear the latest tips, tricks and insights. Plus, partake in our hands-on SociaLabs in the afternoon to get direct experience working with various solutions under the guidance of a VMware expert.

Here’s a list of VMware technical leaders and industry experts who will be presenting:

  • Chris Wolf, VMware CTO of the Americas – “Delivering Tomorrow’s Agile, Secure and Open Solutions, Today”
  • Kevin Mitnick, internationally-known Global White Hat Hacker – “Art of Deception: How Hackers and Con Artists Manipulate You and What You Can Do About It”
  • Continue reading

Catch the Latest #VMworld 2016 Updates in Our NSX SociaLab

So you missed VMworld 2016…You can still hear about the latest VMware NSX updates in an NSX-focused SociaLab!

Sign up for an NSX SociaLab in your area now.

NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). Bring your own device to this interactive hands-on lab event where our engineering experts will guide you step-by-step through the technical features, functions and business use cases of NSX that were released at VMworld 2016 – all while you test drive the solution for yourself.

During the event, you’ll get to partake in multiple Hands-On Labs featuring logical switching, dynamic routing, distributed firewall, logical network services, all of which were featured at VMworld 2016, and more. You’ll walk away from our SociaLab knowing how to:

  • Create a logical switch and attach virtual machines to it
  • Understand the routing capabilities supported in NSX and the benefit of performing them at the hypervisor layer
  • Explore how the distributed firewall protects a 3-tier application and create rules based on security groups & identity

Now’s your chance to hear what you missed out on at VMworld to meet our technical experts, ask questions and collaborate with peers. Don’t miss this in-person opportunity to learn Continue reading

How Jefferson County’s IT Department Improved Their Security Posture with VMware NSX

Jefferson County, Colorado (“Jeffco”) is a local jurisdiction located against the beautiful Rocky Mountains and adjacent to the state capital in Denver.  Jeffco’s IT jefferson-county-colorado-squarelogo-2organization is charged with meeting the needs not only of the various internal departments of the county, but also of serving its half million residents.

As with most IT departments, Jeffco’s IT team has some key priorities to address, including modernizing application infrastructures and bringing more efficiency to business processes — all while fundamentally enhancing security.  It was these needs that led Jeffco to VMware NSX. “We’re doing as much as we can to simplify our infrastructure, yet provide more security, higher up time, and better performance,” says Matt Alexander, Senior Systems Administrator.

Like many other organizations, Jeffco first considered VMware NSX for micro-segmentation.  Their network had followed the traditional model of data center security: perimeter firewalls, DMZ, internal security zone.  But this legacy security model wasn’t enough.  Jeffco recognized the need to treat all network traffic — regardless of whether it originated inside or outside the data center — as potentially insecure.  “From a micro-segmentation and east-west firewalling perspective, we may have had the ability [in the past] but it was exceptionally expensive with physical Continue reading

How Virtualization Will Transform Security Architectures: Spotlight at #VMworld U.S. 2016

It’s clear today that security is at a crossroads, and we are losing the cybersecurity war. VMware’s SVP of Security Products Tom Corn explained to me recently, “There are no objective measures we can credibly point to which suggest we are – in any way – succeeding as we battle to protect systems and data.”

Register for this VMworld 2016 session to learn about the transformation of security architecture

One of the biggest problems, he points out, is that Cyberwarfare is an asymmetric battle: an attacker fires a thousand bullets and only one needs to get thru. Defenders need to stop all 1,000. So what are we doing to address this challenge?

We don’t appear to have an issue with how much we spend, or that there is a lack of security innovation. We are spending at record levels, and security innovation is at an all time high.

At the heart of the issue is an architectural gap – between the applications and data we are trying to protect, and the infrastructure from which we are trying to protect them. Virtualization could be the key to solving this problem — enabling security to be architected-in, rather than bolted on.  Continue reading

VMware NSX is the Networking Bridge to a Multi-Cloud Future

Across industries, the race is on to digital transformation. It’s all about business innovation and redefinition. The transformations are huge: Tesla isn’t just a car manufacturer; it’s a software business that makes cars. CITI is a software business that makes loans. GE is a software business that makes industrial equipment.

Register for this VMworld 2016 session to learn about the future of VMware NSX

Like most of the customers we talk with, your business is also going through a transformation. Lots of change. Lots of disruption. Lots of innovation. More apps, representing more services and new business models. More lines of business empowered to make decisions about the IT they’ll use to take their innovations to market. And there’s no doubt that a huge enabler of all of this has been the cloud.

Consider what some of the leading industry pundits are predicting:

  • By 2019, the majority of virtual machines (VMs) will be delivered by IaaS providers.
  • By 2019, more than 30% of the 100 largest vendors’ new software investments will have shifted from cloud-first to cloud-only.
  • By 2020, a corporate “no-cloud” policy will be as rare as a “no-internet” policy is today
  • By 2020, 50% of applications running Continue reading

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Achieves Reliable, Secure, High-Performance Cloud Services with VMware NSX

King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology’s (KACST) Internet Services Unit (ISU) needed to build a reliable, secure, scalable Public Cloud service that is automated and on demand. It also needed to provide seamless operations for their customers, which includes all of the academic institutions and government organizations in Saudi Arabia. ISU was able to satisfy this requirement by deploying VMware NSX for network and security virtualization and VMware vRealize Automation to automate the service creation and delivery of personalized infrastructure and applications to its customers.

Khaleel K. Al-Jadaan, the Deputy Director and Network Operations Manager of KACST’s Internet Services Unit, says, “A complete and secure cloud service was the top priority. VMware has proved to be the trusted partner, time and time again, to provide compelling and reliable solutions.”

Now KACST’s customers can request new services and manage their existing workloads by accessing the datacenter directly and securely through an automated portal. They can self-provision computational and storage resources, with built-in network and security facilities. And when multi-tier applications are provisioned automatically, all the underlying networking and security are provisioned too. With VMware’s software infrastructure platform in place, ISU is positioned to develop new services rapidly, and start Continue reading

Poland’s Poznań Science and Technology Park Upgrades Its Infrastructure-as-a-Service Model with VMware NSX

Poznań Science and Technology Park—known in Polish as Poznańskiego Parku Naukowo-Technologicznego, or PPNT—supports the incubation of start-ups and technology companies in Poland through co-operation with science, business, and technology enterprises. Its facilities and services include laboratories, office space, and specialized research equipment, as well as IT infrastructure services like server colocation and hosting, system monitoring servers, storage space, and data transmission infrastructure leasing.

To build a virtual, multi-tenant, private infrastructure-as-a-service cloud, on a flexible billing schedule, for its demanding customers, PPNT opted for an integrated solution that included VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Director, and VMware NSX. The business benefits became clear immediately. PPNT’s new, high-performance environment enabled robust management capabilities, and guaranteed security and fault-tolerant access. Plus, resource provisioning time was reduced from days to seconds.

Says manager of the PPNT DataCenter Tomasz Łukaszewicz: “VMware NSX, the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center, enables our customers to create, save, delete, and restore virtual networks on demand, without reconfiguring the physical network. It also provides a better security model.”

Read the complete case study

The post Poland’s Poznań Science and Technology Park Upgrades Its Infrastructure-as-a-Service Model with VMware NSX appeared first on The Network Virtualization Blog.

Node Africa Deploys Greenfield Data Center Infrastructure, Leads Africa to be Cloud First Continent

Node Africa is a cloud service provider and cloud broker. One of very few hybrid to public cloud providers in Africa, it offers its customers bespoke cloud infrastructure and services including consulting, design, build, and deployment of complex solutions. When the organization launched in Kenya, their challenges included deploying a data center in under two months, and creating a hybrid offering that would reduce bandwidth challenges.

Because of cost constraints, Node Africa chose VMware and the vCloud Air Network program (vCAN) to build its business and data center, so that they would only pay for what they used. Then, using the vCloud Architecture Toolkit—including vSphere, vCloud Director, and NSX—they built a scalable cloud infrastructure in six weeks.

Node Africa CEO Phares Kariuki says, “The amount of money we have saved on networking equipment as a result of using NSX as the basis of our network has been amazing. We saved $10,000 on just our initial network infrastructure investment, that’s big for a green fields start-up.”

Read the complete case study here.

Roger

The post Node Africa Deploys Greenfield Data Center Infrastructure, Leads Africa to be Cloud First Continent appeared first on The Network Virtualization Blog.

Gain Deep Insight Into Your NSX Network While Simplifying Management and Operations

We’re excited to announce that VMware NSX, version 6.2.3, is now available for all customers with active support. As we evolve the NSX platform, we continue to place a high degree of emphasis on helping customers operationalize NSX, speed-up deployment, and integrate with more systems from our NSX ecosystem partners. This latest release introduces enhanced network monitoring and troubleshooting tools with expanded hardware partner integration.

Some of the top highlights include:

Native Visibility and Reporting

Resolve problems faster, visualize event trends, trigger alerts, and more, all in real-time with VMware vRealize Log Insight for NSX, now included with NSX Standard, Advanced and Enterprise licenses. This new capability introduces:

  • Centralized big data log management built for NSX
  • Monitoring and dashboards for network virtualization and security

To learn more about vRealize Log Insight for NSX refer to the FAQ or visit the Log Insight product page here.

Improvements to NSX Management and Operations

Reduce Mean Time to Recovery with improved troubleshooting and operational capabilities.  Key enhancements include:

  • Dashboards for health status of components and built-in monitoring of all critical systems communication channels
  • Simplified filtering of firewall rules
  • Enhancements to central CLI
  • New partner services to enable packet capture and Continue reading

A.T. Still University greatly improves firewall performance and security with cost-effective VMware NSX solution

ATSU revolutionized its schools and clinics with the cost-effective security solution, VMware NSX, which increases firewall performance, meets HIPAA compliance, automates services, and improves agility, resulting in more affordable tuition and better healthcare services.

Some of the business benefits:

  • easy implementation
  • cost effective
  • better application performance

“VMware NSX is the most revolutionary development in our data center security in more than a decade. Not only do we save a significant amount of money in hardware costs, the micro-segmentation available through VMware NSX provides a dramatically more secure design than we could get with a physical firewall with DMZs.” — Iain Leiter, Network Engineer, A.T. Still University

Download the case study

The post A.T. Still University greatly improves firewall performance and security with cost-effective VMware NSX solution appeared first on The Network Virtualization Blog.

Join a Conversation on Network Virtualization with Leading NSX Industry Experts on June 15th

As technology continues to rapidly evolve, network virtualization is now applied to every aspect of the data center. Before you virtualize your network, it’s important to understand what makes sense for your business, and why. To give you the tools for your next step, we’ve gathered top VMware NSX® industry experts for an open panel discussion on the importance of the network in a virtualized world.

Sign up for our NSX panel webcast on 6/15 and discover valuable insight from these industry leaders. No slides, no scripts, just an open conversation.

Moderated by Joshua Soto, VMware Sr. Product Marketing Manager in Networking & Security, our NSX team will start the session with a discussion on network virtualization and how it completes the virtualization infrastructure. Then they’ll discuss the evolution of the data center, the role of fluid architectures, and how NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC).

Don’t miss this chance to hear from leading network virtualization experts in a relaxed, conversational environment.

Register to attend our NSX panel webcast on 6/15 today!

The post Join a Conversation on Network Virtualization with Leading NSX Industry Experts on June 15th appeared first on The Network Virtualization Continue reading

Micro-Fiber, Meet Micro-Segmentation! Columbia Sportswear Virtualizes the Network, Saves Millions

With 110 stores in North America, 46 data center locations, and $2 billion in revenue, Columbia Sportswear is constantly processing huge amounts of data—data whose security was being compromised by their inadequate hardware-defined data center.

When Columbia Sportswear virtualized their network, they not only stepped up their security; they also saved $16 million over a comparable hardware-based security approach.

Download our free ebook: Redefining Networking with Network Virtualization

How? Find out here. Follow their process step by step in the infographic below.

15VM061-Columbia_Sportswear_Infographic_Final 3

The post Micro-Fiber, Meet Micro-Segmentation! Columbia Sportswear Virtualizes the Network, Saves Millions appeared first on The Network Virtualization Blog.

Packet Pushers Podcast Gets Techical About VMware NSX with Hutto Independent School District

Based in Texas, the Hutto Independent School District comprises more than 6,000 K-12 students on 8 campuses. When they decided to virtualize their network, they had a number of factors to keep in mind. Would the technology support VDI implementation? How would a virtual network affect business as usual? Could they deploy NSX themselves? Could they deploy NSX alongside Cisco ACI?

If you’re familiar with VMware NSX, you may have an inkling about the answers to these questions. But that’s no reason not to listen to this entertaining episode of the Packet Pushers Podcast, our favorite podcast geared toward IT practitioners and professionals.

In this episode, hosts Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks sit down with representatives from theHutto ISD—Director of Technology Travis Brown; Network Administrator Keith Reynolds; and Network Administrator Christopher Harding—to talk about why Hutto decided to virtualize the network, and why they chose to #RunNSX

Take a listen!

The post Packet Pushers Podcast Gets Techical About VMware NSX with Hutto Independent School District appeared first on The Network Virtualization Blog.

VMware vForum Live Chicago is Here May 25th

VMware vForum Live Chicago is rapidly approaching and if you’re an IT professional interested in exploring the benefits of virtualization, mobility, or cloud, then join our experts in-person for an interactive, all-day event that will take you through technical deep dives of VMware solutions. Sign up today for vForum Live in Chicago on May 25th and discover the myriad ways you can simplify your IT and receive actionable advice on how to deliver an effective cloud strategy from our keynote speakers, breakout sessions, hands-on lab environments, and more. Plus, you’ll have the chance to win some pretty sweet prizes, too!

In the morning, enjoy breakfast with your peers and make sure to snag your VMware lanyard and logo bag at the registration table. Then take a seat in the main plenary and take in our world-class keynote speakers as they divulge tips, tricks and insights into their various fields. Here’s the list of IT’s biggest names and VMware technical leaders who will be presenting:

  • Chris Wolf, VMware’s CTO of the Americas – “How to Build a Successful Digital Business in the New Economy”
  • Kevin Mitnick, internationally-known Global White Hat Hacker – “Art of Deception: How Hackers and Con Continue reading
1 2 3 4