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This is a liveblog for the Day 1 general session at VMworld 2015 in San Francisco. For many people, VMworld started yesterday with the Welcome Receptio in the Solutions Exchange, but today marks the official kick-off to the event. I’ll have to end this liveblog shortly before the general session ends in order to make it to some customer meetings.
The keynote kicks off with a short video about the VMware Cloud Academy, where both “legacy” and “cloud-native” apps can enjoy the Unified Hybrid Cloud. Following that video, Carl Eschenbach takes the stage (along with some “apps”). Eschenbach sets the stage for the session by talking about the momentum and volume of success that VMware has enjoyed (and continues to enjoy). He also calls out VMware’s philanthropic efforts, via the VMware Foundation and the #vGiveBack program.
Eschenbach nexts dives a bit deeper on the theme of the show, “Ready for Any.” This means VMware technologies and products supporting any application, any cloud, any infrastructure, any time, any place…you get the idea. This theme encompasses SDDC (software-defined data center) initiatives, mobility initiatives, and EUC (end-user computing) initiatives. Eschenbach talks in a a bit more detail about how Unified Hybrid Cloud Continue reading
Cross vCenter Networking & Security with VMware NSX
NSX 6.2 was released on August 20, 2015. One of the key features in NSX 6.2 is Cross vCenter Networking and Security. This new capability scales NSX vSphere across vCenter boundaries. Now, one can span logical networking and security constructs across vCenter boundaries irrespective of whether the vCenters are in adjacent racks or across datacenters (up to 150ms apart). This enables us to solve a variety of use cases including:
- Capacity pooling across vCenters
- Simplifying data center migrations
- Cross vCenter and long distance vMotion
- Disaster recovery
With Cross vCenter Networking & Security one can extend logical switches (VXLAN networks) across vCenter boundaries enabling a layer 2 segment to span across VCs even when the underlying network is a pure IP / L3 network. However, the big innovation here is that with NSX we can also extend distributed routing and distributed firewalling seamlessly across VCs to provide a comprehensive solution as seen in the figure below.
Of course, there are a more details behind how this feature works and how we solve some really cool challenges in a simple elegant manner with network virtualization which we will cover at VMworld 2015 in the session NET5989. In the meanwhile if Continue reading
VMware’s Photon Platform Embraces an All-Container World
But virtualization is a part of it, of course. And vSphere isn't left behind.
Docker at VMworld 2015: VMs are a Sound Infrastructure for Dockerized Applications
written by David Messina, Docker, Inc. VMware’s announcements both today and last year at VMworld are reflective of the efforts we’re seeing among our ecosystem partners as they continue to optimize their infrastructure solutions for Dockerized applications. The approach that VMware … ContinuedEnabling the Software-Defined Data Center Vision
We’re excited to announce our latest tier 1 partnership, this time with VMware, which demonstrates the growing strategic role and importance that Cumulus Linux plays in rapidly building and scaling private and public clouds. VMware has announced VMware EVO SDDC — a software suite that provides a prescriptive and simple way for organizations to build and operate highly scalable and performant private clouds based on VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) architecture. With VMware EVO SDDC bundled with OEM hardware, VMware provides compute, storage and network virtualization, and now fully integrated physical networking solutions.
Cumulus Linux comes embedded in VMware EVO SDDC, which also includes a hardware management system (HMS) component with software integration at the network layer. The top of rack (ToR), spine, and management switches all run Cumulus Linux as the network OS on Dell and Quanta platforms. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions based on the suite will be available over time through an exclusive set of VMware partners.
This technology partnership is significant for several reasons. First, to have struck such a strategic OEM partnership with VMware is a ringing endorsement of the enterprise-grade quality of software that Cumulus Linux represents as well as the quality of engineering Continue reading
VMware NSX – It’s About the Platform Ecosystem
The basis of competition has shifted from individual products and technologies to platforms,
Best-In-Class Partners
but with everyone aspiring to be a platform the bar is set high. A platform must be a value-creation entity, underpinned by a robust architecture that includes a set of well-integrated software artifacts and programming interfaces to enable reuse and extensibility by third parties. Platforms must support an ecosystem that can function in a unified way, foster interactions among its members and orchestrate its network of partners. And finally, platforms must adhere to the network effect theory which asserts that the value of a platform to a user increases as more users subscribe to it, in effect, creating a positive feedback loop.
The VMware NSX network virtualization platform meets this criteria resoundingly. NSX is specifically designed to provide a foundation for a high-value, differentiated ecosystem of partners that includes some of the networking industry’s most significant players. The NSX platform leverages multi-layered network abstractions, an extensible and distributed service framework with multiple entry points, and transparent insertion and orchestration of partner services. What distinguishes NSX from other platforms is its inherent security constructs which partner solutions inherit, and a context sharing and synchronization capability Continue reading
Building Globally Distributed, Mission Critical Applications: Lessons From the Trenches Part 1
This is Part 1 of a guest post by Kris Beevers, founder and CEO, NSONE, a purveyor of a next-gen intelligent DNS and traffic management platform.
Every tech company thinks about it: the unavoidable – in fact, enviable – challenge of scaling its applications and systems as the business grows. How can you think about scaling from the beginning, and put your company on good footing, without optimizing prematurely? What are some of the key challenges worth thinking about now, before they bite you later on? When you’re building mission critical technology, these are fundamental questions. And when you’re building a distributed infrastructure, whether for reliability or performance or both, they’re hard questions to answer.
Putting the right architecture and processes in place will enable your systems and company to withstand the common hiccups distributed, high traffic applications face. This enables you to stay ahead of scaling constraints, manage inevitable network and system failures, stay calm and debug production issues in real-time, and grow your company and product successfully.
Who is this guy?
I’ve been building globally distributed, large scale applications for a long time. Way back in the first dot-com boom, I bailed on college classes for Continue reading