VMworld 2021 – 11 Sessions I’m Excited About!!!!

While I’m disappointed I can’t see my coworkers and customers again this year at VMworld this October 5-7, I’m still looking forward to all the great content that will be shared. One of the benefits of virtual is again this year is that it’s free for all attendees! Here’s my Top 11.

VMware vSAN – Dynamic Volumes for Traditional and Modern Applications [MCL1084] – Duncan Epping and Cormac Hogan are at it again presenting their deep knowledge of VSAN in both traditional and modern application use cases. I’m looking forward to see their take on VMware vSphere container storage interface (CSI) in Kubernetes! 

William Lam – App Modernization Deep Dive with VMware Cloud on AWS and VMware Tanzu [MCL2290] – Is VMworld even VMworld without William?! I have been waiting for a long time to talk VMWonAWS and Tanzu!! For those of you who want to see modern apps with Tanzu on VMWonAWS, this session is a must!

Achieving Happiness: The Quest for Something New [IC1484] – Those of you who have met Amanda Blevins know that she’s not only about technology but is also passionate about personal development and brand building. Many things have changed over the past 18 months with our day to day profession and I’m anxious to see what insights Amanda and Steve Athanas (CIO UMass Lowell) will have for us!

A Guide to vSphere with VMware Tanzu: Day 2 Operations for the VI Admin [APP1718] – No doubt Dean Lewis and Simon Conyard will bring their technical acumen and British wit to the session as they cover basic Kubernetes architecture in a way that makes sense for the VI Admin. Kubernetes is a fun word to say, but it’s a completely different thing to say AND do in the enterprise….at the end of the day, you still need to manage the application. These two gents will show you how!

An End-to-End Demo of Day 0 to Day 2 VMware Tanzu Management with vRealize [APP1586] – Matt Bradford and Sam McGeown always create great demos for their sessions. This is a must see for those on the Tanzu and modern application path and want to see how the vRealize suite is making Day 0-2 a cinch.

A Guide to the Cloud Operating Model [MCL1115] – Clouds are becoming the new silos. SaaS can grow your environment exponentially at a rapid pace and before you know it, you’re in the same siloed chaos you were in before cloud. Taruna and Martijn walk you through VMware’s multi-cloud approach when creating a consistent cloud operating model. It’s great to leverage multiple clouds based on specific use cases but it’s important to know how to best manage them.

Design Principles: Cloud Architecture Design and Operations [MCL2151] – Without a doubt these two Principal Architects are some of the smartest people I know at VMware. Mitesh and Andrea have been designing Enterprise VMWonAWS deployment since the service has been available. If you want to know how best to design VMWonAWS for production, this session is #1!

Automate VMware HCX Workload Migration to VMware Cloud on AWS [MCL1050] – This session would be #2 to the one above. Now that you have the VMWonAWS SDDC deployed, it’s time to migrate! Phoebe and Asaf bring their VCDX (between them, they have four!) and HCX knowledge to show you how to automate your migrations.

Cloud Workload Security and Protection on VMware Cloud [SEC1296] – While you’ve migrated workloads to VMWonAWS, you still need to secure them. Being in the cloud does not remove you from needing to protect the asset. Using the security features of NSX on VMWonAWS is a great start. To be even more secure, this panel will show how you can leverage Carbon Black on VMWonAWS.

A Guide to Application Migration Nirvana [MCL1264] – Bottom line….application migrations can be HARD! vRealize Network Insight has quickly become one of the main tools used to help customers understand applications and how to effectively plan for migrations to VMware’s Cloud. Martijn Smit has a wealth of experience to share do be sure to add this to the schedule!!

VMware DRaaS – Combine Two Services for Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plans [MCL1202] – This session should be awesome! It’s not just about Site Recovery Manager (SRM) anymore. If you haven’t taken a look at VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR aka Datrium) yet, you should. This session will cover both solutions and how we’re allowing customers to recover from ransomeware attacks, outages, and more. It’s all about flexibility and this session will give you the information you need to make those critical business continuity and disaster recovery decisions.

I admit that most of these sessions are cloud and application based but that’s where my passion lies and that’s where my customers are headed! Don’t forget to register today and Enjoy VMworld 2021!!!!

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AWS re:Invent 2018 – Day 1

This is where things really get moving. I’m happy to say I didn’t regret gorging myself with wings the night before and was ready to hit the ground running to see re:Invent in full swing. Day 1 step count…15,308 (7.57 mi). I started off the morning by attending everyone’s favorite topic….SECURITY!!! This session was spent debunking 13 Cloud Security Myths. A few things that I already knew were reinforced. One, public clouds are more secure that on-prem data centers. Two, security should be the first thing you think about when deploying everything from applications to infrastructure. Three, if you continue to follow older security models that have been around for years, you are missing the entire point of the cloud!

 

Next up was a two-hour workshop getting some hands-on experience with the AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). VPCs are the backbone to everything AWS including VMware Cloud on AWS. Although I have taken some online classes via AWS and A Cloud Guru, it was great to spend more time setting up VPCs as it is core to understanding how AWS works. We worked in groups of six where we set up VPC peering with each other. My main takeaway….have a concrete plan for the CIDR blocks you choose for your VPCs. If you don’t plan correctly, you will have to start over. A tool given out by the architects running the session was http://subnet-calculator.org/cidr.php . Bookmark it! An added benefit to the workshop was $25 in AWS credits!

Next stop was the Expo Hall and welcome reception. Of course, the hall was massive with hundreds of booths and all the SWAG you can handle. I decided to take a look around beforehand so I knew where to get “the good stuff.” Since I’m a VMware guy, it was awesome to see us well represented we even have our newest members of the family in Heptio (met Joe Beda at the booth) and Cloud Health with booths of their own.

The last session of the day was a VMware Cloud on AWS Deep Dive with Andy Reedy and Jin Zhang. If you ever get a chance to spend time with Andy, I would recommend it. I met him two years ago at some customer meetings and he is a fantastic architect. He got into the weeds with VMWonAWS regarding the host hardware and the interconnectivity between the vSphere hosts and AWS native services. We even went into the i3 and r5 models for EBS backed VSAN. It was a great session. As I have said before, AWS and VMware have a deep partnership to make this service available. The pace of innovation is blinding! Day 2 is next!!

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VMware Cloud on AWS Connection Options

Happy New Year!!! This is going to be an exciting year for VMware Cloud on AWS and I wanted to kick off 2018 by highlighting the way in which you are going to connect into and out of VMware Cloud on AWS.

First of all, VMware Cloud on AWS is optimized (VMware Cloud Foundation) to run on dedicated, elastic bare metal infrastructure at a very high level inside Amazon’s data centers. For security purposes, the VMware Cloud on AWS SDCC is bifurcated to the components that manage the SDDC itself such as ESXi, VSAN, NSX, and vCenter.

Here’s a simple explanation of how you can setup the connectivity framework.

The first thing you need to setup is a connection to the management components of the SDDC.  You will first need to create a Management VPN and choose a set range of IP addresses that will be used by management components such as the ESXi hosts and vCenter. This range will be in the form of a simple CIDR block. We recommend using a /20 CIDR block for management purposes. After you connect the management portion of the SDDC, you will then need to setup an IPSec VPN between your on-prem data center and management components. This VPN can be setup over the Internet or AWS Direct Connect (DirectX). After this connection is established, you can then build firewall rules on the VMware Cloud on AWS Console. With these rules you can control access to the  vCenter from your on-prem data center.

There is an optional connection you can setup if you need access to your vCenter Server directly from the Internet. A public IP is automatically provided during the provisioning process. It is important to note that all access to this IP is restricted. To provide access, you will need to configure firewall rules in the VMware Cloud on AWS console to allow this direct type of Internet access.

The second VPN you will need to setup is between your compute workloads and your on-premise data center. Several logical networks are required to provide the IP addresses for the workloads you plan on migrating or build in VMware Cloud on AWS. This VPN secures these workloads and allows them to connect back to your on-prem data center. This can be an IPSec VPN or L2VPN. The L2VPN advantage is that you can stretch a single L3 IP space from on-prem to the cloud and is also required for live migrations. This VPN can go over the Internet or AWS DirectX. You can again create firewall rules as needed to access on-prem workloads.

The next connection is between your SDDC workloads and your Amazon VPC. This is automatically configured and built during the SDDC provisioning process. Once you select the Amazon VPC subnet that will be associated with your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC an elastic network interface (ENI) will be created allowing traffic to flow between both environments.  In order to control security, you will need to configure AWS IAM policies as well as firewall rules on the VMware Cloud on AWS side to allow access between both. Lastly, you will likely need to give direct public internet access to some of your SDDC workloads. To make these accessible to the Internet, you will need to leverage AWS elastic IPs along with NAT and firewall configurations to allow this type of access.

That’s it! Now you are ready to leverage your SDDC on VMware Cloud on AWS!

Also, here’s a video that covers the content discussed above.

-SL

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Some of you may remember the movie Field of Dreams where Kevin Costner’s character Ray Kinsella hears the phrase “if you build it, they will come.” Ray interprets this to mean he needs to plow under a portion of his corn field to build a baseball field and risk the economic and emotional stability of the family he loves dearly. The ending of the movie is open to interpretation but we assume Ray and his family lived happily ever after even if seemed like a crazy idea to everyone else.

With all the industry buzz around Cloud, many customers believe that if they build a Cloud solution (on or off premises) people will adapt and use it. This could not be further from the truth. Those of you wanting to disrupt the status quo need to first ask the question “what problem am I trying to solve”? Without specific use cases, you can end up wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars building a solution that no one will use. Once you have determined the problem(s) you would like to solve and fully understand what the goal is, you can then begin looking at solutions.  Without a true problem to solve and full understanding of the cloud solution of choice, you risk building a cloud solution with no customers.

This past week VMware Staff Solution Architect Sudhir Balasubramanian authored a blog covering Oracle RAC on VMware on AWS.  One of the  most compelling things around VMware Cloud on AWS is the fact that it’s underlying architecture is built on vSphere, VSAN, and NSX. This makes moving  Business Critical Application  workloads to a public cloud easier.

-SL