VMware Cloud on AWS with Direct Connect: NSX Networking and vMotion to the Cloud with Demo
Check out my prior below blogs here on VMware Network Virtualization blog on how NSX is leveraged in VMware Cloud on AWS to provide all the networking and security features. These prior blogs provide a foundation that this blog post builds on. In this blog post I discuss how AWS Direct Connect can be leveraged with VMware Cloud on AWS to provide high bandwidth, low latency connectivity to a SDDC deployed in VMware Cloud on AWS. This is one of my favorite features as it provides high bandwidth, low latency connectivity from on-prem directly into the customer’s VMware Cloud on AWS VPC enabling better and consistent connectivity/performance while also enabling live migration/vMotion from on-prem to cloud! I want to to thank my colleague, Venky Deshpande, who helped with some of the details in this post. Continue reading
Stateful vs Stateless firewalls: Which one to use when?
Firewalls provide traffic filtering and protects the trusted environment for the untrusted. A firewall can be stateful or stateless A stateful firewall is capable of tracking connection states, it is better equipped to allow or deny traffic based on such knowledge. A TCP connection for example goes through the handshake (SYN-SYN+ACK-SYN), to EASTABLISHED state, and … Continue reading Stateful vs Stateless firewalls: Which one to use when?Meet Me at VMware NSX Deep Dive Event in Zurich
When VMware launched the first version of NSX for vSphere more than four years ago, the NSBU team reached out to me and asked me to create a sponsored webinar describing NSX fundamentals, its architecture, and high-level deployment guidelines.
In the meantime we discussed updating the materials, but nothing ever happened. Time to fix that, this time from a vendor-neutral perspective. We’ll start with a day-long event on April 19th 2018 in Zurich, Switzerland.
Read more ...Want to Learn More About SD-WAN? Register for Our SD-WAN 101 Webinar Series
No other technology in recent history has experienced the growth rate that SD-WAN currently possesses. The buzz is high, the benefits are numerous, and its strategic position in digital transformation is critical. Enterprises are changing their legacy networks and dramatically improving the way they do business, offering next-generation technology today because of SD-WAN.
You May Be Wondering:
- What makes SD-WAN different than a WAN?
- Why is it so important to the network fabric of today’s businesses?
- Why is it so transformative?
- How can it help me and my business?
If you’ve asked these questions and want to understand SD-WAN better and determine if it’s a good fit for your business, sign up for our VeloCloud SD-WAN 101 webinar. Choose the date that works best for you!
This webinar will provide you with the essential information you’ll need to understand SD-WAN. You’ll learn how to leverage SD-WAN to improve and optimize your existing network to meet your business needs. And, you’ll gain a clear understanding of next steps in determining your path forward with SD-WAN.
Register today: http://www.velocloud.com/sd-wan-resources/webinars/sd-wan-101
The post Want to Learn More About SD-WAN? Register for Our SD-WAN 101 Webinar Series appeared first on Network Virtualization.
Video: Create an NSX Logical Switch with PowerNSX
After introducing PowerNSX Anthony Burke illustrated how easy it is to use with a Hello, World equivalent: creating a logical switch (VXLAN segment).
You’ll need at least free ipSpace.net subscription to watch the video.
Want to know more about VMware NSX? We’ll run an NSX-focused event and a NSX Deep Dive workshop in Zurich on April 19th 2018, an overview webinar comparing NSX, ACI and EVPN on March 1st, and a deep dive in VMware NSX architecture later in 2018.
Ericsson CEO Says Cisco Partnership Isn’t Dead Yet
The companies are looking for new areas to work together.
Your Container Volumes Served By oVirt
Note: < 5 minutes read
When running a virtualization workload on oVirt, a VM disk is 'natively' a disk somewhere on your network-storage.
Entering containers world, on Kubernetes(k8s) or OpenShift, there are many options specifically because the workload can be totally stateless, i.e
they are stored on a host supplied disk and can be removed when the container is terminated. The more interesting case is stateful workloads i.e apps that persist data (think DBs, web servers/services, etc). k8s/OpenShift designed an API to dynamically provision the container storage (volume in k8s terminology).
See the resources section for more details.
In this post I want to cover how oVirt can provide volumes for containers running on k8s/OpenShift cluster.
Overview
Consider this: you want to deploy wikimedia as a container, with all its content served from /opt.
For that you will create a persistent volume for the container - when we have state to keep and server
creating a volume makes sense. It is persistent, it exists regardless the container state,
and you can choose which directory exactly you serve that volume, and that is the most important
part, k8s/OpenShift gives you an API to determine who will provide the volume Continue reading
Your Container Volumes Served By oVirt
Note: < 5 minutes read
When running a virtualization workload on oVirt, a VM disk is 'natively' a disk somewhere on your network-storage.
Entering containers world, on Kubernetes(k8s) or OpenShift, there are many options specifically because the workload can be totally stateless, i.e
they are stored on a host supplied disk and can be removed when the container is terminated. The more interesting case is stateful workloads i.e apps that persist data (think DBs, web servers/services, etc). k8s/OpenShift designed an API to dynamically provision the container storage (volume in k8s terminology).
See the resources section for more details.
In this post I want to cover how oVirt can provide volumes for containers running on k8s/OpenShift cluster.
Overview
Consider this: you want to deploy wikimedia as a container, with all its content served from /opt.
For that you will create a persistent volume for the container - when we have state to keep and server
creating a volume makes sense. It is persistent, it exists regardless the container state,
and you can choose which directory exactly you serve that volume, and that is the most important
part, k8s/OpenShift gives you an API to determine who will provide the volume Continue reading
Home network traffic analysis with a Raspberry Pi 3, a NetGear Switch and Ntop
I had the Raspberry Pi laying around for some time without doing any major function and so was a the NetGear switch [1]. So, I decided to do a weekend project to implement traffic analysis on my home network. I have a PPPoE connection to my ISP that connects to my home router [2]. The … Continue reading Home network traffic analysis with a Raspberry Pi 3, a NetGear Switch and NtopVideo: What Is PowerNSX?
One of the beauties of VMware NSX is that it’s fully API-based – you can automate any aspect of it by writing a script (or using any of the network automation tools) that executes a series of well-defined (and well-documented) API calls.
To make that task even easier, VMware released PowerNSX, an open-source library of PowerShell commandlets that abstract the internal details of NSX API and give you an easy-to-use interface (assuming you use PowerShell as your automation tool).
Read more ...Want to Learn More about Docker and Containers?
One of my readers wanted to know more about containers and wondered how ipSpace.net materials could help him. Here’s a short step-by-step guide:
I published this blog post to help ipSpace.net subscribers navigate through Docker- and containers-related material. You might want to skip it if you’re not one of them.
Read more ...Up and Running with oVirt 4.2 and Gluster Storage
In December, the oVirt Project shipped version 4.2 of its open source virtualization management system. With a new release comes an update to this howto for running oVirt together with Gluster storage using a trio of servers to provide for the system's virtualization and storage needs, in a configuration that allows you to take one of the three hosts down at a time without disrupting your running VMs.
If you're looking instead for a simpler, single-machine option for trying out oVirt, your best bet is the oVirt Live ISO page. This is a LiveCD image that you can burn onto a blank CD or copy onto a USB stick to boot from and run oVirt. This is probably the fastest way to get up and running, but once you're up, this is definitely a low-performance option, and not suitable for extended use or expansion.
Read on to learn about my favorite way of running oVirt.
oVirt, Glusterized
Prerequisites
Hardware: You’ll need three machines with 16GB or more of RAM and processors with hardware virtualization extensions. Physical machines are best, but you can test oVirt using nested KVM as well. I've written this howto using VMs running on my "real" Continue reading
Up and Running with oVirt 4.2 and Gluster Storage
In December, the oVirt Project shipped version 4.2 of its open source virtualization management system. With a new release comes an update to this howto for running oVirt together with Gluster storage using a trio of servers to provide for the system's virtualization and storage needs, in a configuration that allows you to take one of the three hosts down at a time without disrupting your running VMs.
If you're looking instead for a simpler, single-machine option for trying out oVirt, your best bet is the oVirt Live ISO page. This is a LiveCD image that you can burn onto a blank CD or copy onto a USB stick to boot from and run oVirt. This is probably the fastest way to get up and running, but once you're up, this is definitely a low-performance option, and not suitable for extended use or expansion.
Read on to learn about my favorite way of running oVirt.
oVirt, Glusterized
Prerequisites
Hardware: You’ll need three machines with 16GB or more of RAM and processors with hardware virtualization extensions. Physical machines are best, but you can test oVirt using nested KVM as well. I've written this howto using VMs running on my "real" Continue reading
OVN and Red Hat Virtualization: Provisioning OVN
Hi folks, in this final post on RHV and OVN I’m going to show you how to utilize everything we’ve learned and installed up to this point. We’ve installed the packages, now it’s just a matter of deploying some virtual machines and attaching them to the new OVN provided SDN. As before my colleague, Tony James walks us through the process. Let’s get started.
Like any other integration in Red Hat Virtualization, we access OVN by way of the External Provider feature. In short, the External Provider allows RHV to take advantage of resources managed by external sources, in this case SDN.
Let’s post the video first, the walk through follows:
Add an External Network Provider
The External Provider dialog is launched from the “tree” menu on the far left of the dashboard. We give the network a name and because the OVN controller was deployed on the RHV-M host, the external provider simply points at the local host and port 9696. The external provider type is “External Network Provider”, and the “Read Only” box is unchecked.
Add a Network
Under the “Network” tab, click “New” and enter a name for the new SDN. Check the “Create on external provider” Continue reading
Understanding the Container Network Interface (CNI)
The CNI"nterface" is composed of two components - NetPlugin and the IPAM plugin. While NetPlugin is responsible for setting up network plumbing i.e. conduit between the container & the host, the IPAM plugin is responsible for IP address allocation. Since these two are designed to be pluggable, we can pick-and-choose plugins from different sources/vendors for each of them. CNI takes in a JSON configuration file from the container runtime or from an orchestrator like Kubernetes, that specifies the choice for each Continue reading
oVirt 4.2.2 web admin UI browser bookmarks
oVirt web admin UI now allows the user to bookmark all entities and searches using their browser.
Synchronizing URL with application state
Whenever you select a detail view in the application, the browser URL is now updated to match the selected entity. For instance if you have a VM named MyVM and you click on the name to see the details, the URL of the browser will go to #vms-general;name=MyVM. If you switch to lets say the network interfaces tab the URL in your browser will switch to #vms-network_interfaces;name=MyVM. Changing entity or changing location will keep the browser URL synchronized. This allows you to use your browsers bookmark functionality to store a link to that VM.
Direct linking to entities
As a complementary functionality you can pass arguments to places that will execute some functionality based on the type of argument you have passed in. The following types are available:
- SEARCH, is for main views only, this allows you to pre populate the search string used in the search bar.
- NAME, most entities are uniquely named and you can use their name in a detail view to go directly to that named entity.
- DATACENTER, quota and networks are not uniquely Continue reading
oVirt 4.2.2 web admin UI browser bookmarks
oVirt web admin UI now allows the user to bookmark all entities and searches using their browser.
Synchronizing URL with application state
Whenever you select a detail view in the application, the browser URL is now updated to match the selected entity. For instance if you have a VM named MyVM and you click on the name to see the details, the URL of the browser will go to #vms-general;name=MyVM. If you switch to lets say the network interfaces tab the URL in your browser will switch to #vms-network_interfaces;name=MyVM. Changing entity or changing location will keep the browser URL synchronized. This allows you to use your browsers bookmark functionality to store a link to that VM.
Direct linking to entities
As a complementary functionality you can pass arguments to places that will execute some functionality based on the type of argument you have passed in. The following types are available:
- SEARCH, is for main views only, this allows you to pre populate the search string used in the search bar.
- NAME, most entities are uniquely named and you can use their name in a detail view to go directly to that named entity.
- DATACENTER, quota and networks are not uniquely Continue reading
Build oVirt Reports Using Grafana
Grafana, The open platform for beautiful analytics and monitoring, recently added support for PostgreSQL.
It in now possible to connect Grafana to oVirt DWH, in order to visualize and monitor the oVirt environment.
Grafana dashboard example
If you wish to create dashboards to monitor oVirt environment, you will need to install Grafana.
Grafana automatically creates an admin user and password.
You will need to add a PostgreSQL data source that connects to the DWH database.
For example:
You may want to add a read only user to connect the history database - Allowing read only access to the history database
Now you can start creating your dashboard widgets.
Go to Dashboards -> + New.
Graph panel example:
To add a Graph type panel, on the left side you have the Row controls menu.
Go to the + Add Panel, and pick Graph.
Query example for the - Five Most Utilized Hosts by Memory / CPU:
SELECT DISTINCT
min(time) AS time,
MEM_Usage,
host_name || 'MEM_Usage' as metric
FROM (
SELECT
stats_hosts.host_id,
CASE
WHEN delete_date IS NULL
THEN host_name
ELSE
host_name
||
' (Removed on '
||
CAST ( CAST ( delete_date AS date ) AS varchar )
Continue readingVMware Cloud on AWS with NSX: Communicating with Native AWS Resources
If you haven’t already, please read my prior two blogs on VMware Cloud on AWS: VMware SDDC with NSX Expands to AWS and VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX – Connecting SDDCs Across Different AWS Regions; also posted on my personal blog at humairahmed.com. The prior blogs provide a good intro and information of some of the functionality and advantages of the service. In this blog post I expand the discussion to the advantages of VMware Cloud on AWS being able to communicate with native AWS resources. This is something that would be desired if you have native AWS EC2 instances you want VMware Cloud on AWS workloads to communicate with or if you want to leverage other native AWS services like AWS S3 VPC Endpoint or RDS. Continue reading
OVN and Red Hat Virtualization: Installing OVN
Hi folks, in the last article I provided an overview and introduction to OVN. This time around, I’ll provide a walkthrough on how to actually install it in your RHV environment. My colleague Tony created an Ansible playbook to automate the installation, and I’ll share the link to that at the end. Let’s get started.
Necessary Channels and Subscriptions
One of the first thing that Tony covers in the demo is that he used the standard channels for both RHV-M (engine) and Hosts (hypervisors) – nothing special is needed from a subscription standpoint as all of the packages are now included in RHV 4.1. Using the `ovs-vsctl show` command, we see that even though the openvswitch package is pulled in as part of the host install, nothing is configured by default.
Automate the Installation with Ansible
Next, we see Tony’s Ansible playbook. It covers 2 plays, one for the engine (RHV-M) and one for the hosts. Not only does it install the packages, but it configures firewalld. Specifically, the playbook does the following:
On the Engine:
It installs “ovirt-provider-ovn” package then it starts/restarts multiple services, north and southbound connections are set.
On the Hosts:
It installs the “ovirt-provider-ovn-driver” package. Continue reading