Scott Lowe

JANUARY 14, 2016

This is a fascinating (to me, at least) paper on the implications of non-volatile storage on today’s data centers (and data center hardware). Dwayne Sinclair (an NSX SE at VMware) has a write-up on what micro-segmentation is not. In case you’re interested, here’s a collection of storage trends and predictions for 2016.

Vmware 60

Vmware Devops Storage Linux 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 23, 2017

Gabriele Gerbino has a nice write-up about Cisco’s efforts with APIs ; his article includes a brief description of YANG data models and a comparison of working with network devices via SSH or via API. VMware recently announced the open sourcing of some software development kits (SDKs) for the new REST APIs in vSphere 6.5.

Open Source 60

Open Source Storage Vmware Network 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 17, 2016

I recently came across a couple useful troubleshooting guides, one for Open vSwitch (OVS) and OpenStack Neutron and one for VMware NSX. Russell Pope at Kovarus recently wrote about using security groups to manage the VMware NSX distributed firewall. VMware recently GA’d version 6.2 It’s a pretty interesting read, in my opinion.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Network Open Source 60

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 14, 2016

This is a fascinating (to me, at least) paper on the implications of non-volatile storage on today’s data centers (and data center hardware). Dwayne Sinclair (an NSX SE at VMware) has a write-up on what micro-segmentation is not. In case you’re interested, here’s a collection of storage trends and predictions for 2016.

Devops 60

Devops Vmware Storage Open Source 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 8, 2016

PowerNSX is pretty cool—it’s a set of PowerShell cmdlets for administrators of VMware NSX running in vSphere environments. Tony Sangha has a nice article providing step-by-step instructions on setting up a site-to-site IPSec VPN between VMware NSX and a Cisco CSR 1000v. Networking. Seen this ?

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Intel Network 60

Scott Lowe

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

The folks over at Cilium took a look at a recent CNI benchmark comparison and unpacked it a bit. Christopher Damerau explains how to use Ansible to manage VMware resources. Next is an older article from Patrick Ogenstad that provides an introduction to ZTP (Zero Touch Provisioning). There’s some handy tips/ideas in here.

Network 60

Network Resources Devops Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

APRIL 24, 2015

Kevin Houston’s March 2015 blade server comparisons might be a useful place to start. By now you’ve probably heard about VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), which was announced in early February. Gabrie Van Zanten has a nice write-up on using tags, along with some PowerCLI scripts, to help manage a VMware Metro Storage Cluster.

Vmware 60

Vmware Storage Firewall Network 60

Scott Lowe

JANUARY 6, 2018

Erik Hinderer takes a stab (based on his field experience) at estimating how long it takes to upgrade VMware NSX. I thought I also saw a VMware blog post on the provider as well, but couldn’t find any link (guess I was mistaken). The vSphere provider for Terraform (did you know there was one?) recently hit 1.0, Virtualization.

Linux 60

Linux Vmware Comparison Network 60

Scott Lowe

MAY 25, 2017

Anthony Shaw has a good comparison of Ansible, StackStorm, and Salt (with a particular view at applicability in a networking context). John Welsh has a post on why someone might use VMware NSX. Michael Kashin has a handy little tool that functions like ssh-copy-id on servers, but for network devices (leveraging Netmiko).

Linux 60

Linux Open Source Network Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

MAY 25, 2017

Anthony Shaw has a good comparison of Ansible, StackStorm, and Salt (with a particular view at applicability in a networking context). John Welsh has a post on why someone might use VMware NSX. Michael Kashin has a handy little tool that functions like ssh-copy-id on servers, but for network devices (leveraging Netmiko).

Linux 60

Linux Open Source Network Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 10, 2015

Anthony Burke (disclaimer: Anthony works for VMware in the NSBU) has a post on how to use Python to automate the bulk creation of firewall rules for use with the VMware NSX distributed firewall. Here’s a post by Grant Orchard on using VMware NSX’s security groups to protect workloads deployed via vCAC (now vRA). Virtualization.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Hardware Software Development 60

Scott Lowe

MARCH 30, 2018

This Tech Short Take marks the end of an era (sort of); it’s the last Tech Short Take published while I’m a VMware employee (today is my last day; see here for more details). William Lam has a series of posts on VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS), which at the time of this writing was up to 4 posts in the series.

Linux 60

Linux Vmware Windows Applications 60

Scott Lowe

NOVEMBER 9, 2018

Fellow VMware alum Steve Flanders has a write-up on running Kubernetes locally (on a Mac). Steven Acreman shares a brief, high-level comparison of the major Kubernetes ingress solutions. Dušan Šušic has a write-up on using Traefik as a Kubernetes ingress controller. Useful nevertheless, though. I loved this set of Bash tips.

Load Balancer 60

Load Balancer Operating Systems Intel Hardware 60

Scott Lowe

JULY 13, 2018

Shahidh Muhammad has a review/comparison of various tools aimed at helping developers build and deploy their apps on Kubernetes. Cormac Hogan walks through setting up the Minio object store on top of VMware vSAN. William Lam shares his list of Visual Studio Code extensions. Virtualization.

Load Balancer 60

Load Balancer Virtualization Authentication Tools 60

Fountainhead

JUNE 29, 2009

The only major things missing from their "Starter Kit" suite they offer are the addition of VMware - not cheap if you choose to purchase it - as well as the addition of a blade (or two) to serve as controllers of the system. A little comparison chart (at right) shows what an IT shop might have to do to accomplish a list of typical functions.

Analysis 147

Analysis HP Data Center Virtualization 147

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 16, 2017

Anthony Shaw has a good comparison of Ansible, StackStorm, and Salt (with a particular view at applicability in a networking context). John Welsh has a post on why someone might use VMware NSX. Michael Kashin has a handy little tool that functions like ssh-copy-id on servers, but for network devices (leveraging Netmiko).

Open Source 60

Open Source Network Linux Engineering 60

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 26, 2017

Need a comparison of CloudFormation versus Terraform? Next week is VMworld in Las Vegas, NV, and I’ll be there live-blogging the keynotes (no sessions though, unfortunately—VMware employees generally can’t get into sessions). Shawn Hartsock shows how to build SSHFS on Photon OS. Nothing this time around.

Hardware 60

Hardware Devops Network Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

APRIL 2, 2021

Given the prevalence of VMware’s ESXi hypervisor, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the bad guys really started targeting it in a major way. This time, they’re exploiting a weakness that VMware can’t patch: people. Further, turning off JavaScript doesn’t help. Cloud Computing/Cloud Management.

Vmware 60

Vmware Firewall Storage Comparison 60

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 26, 2014

Ben Fathi, CTO of VMware, takes the stage to start the keynote, and goes through a recap of yesterday’s announcements: EVO and EVO:RAIL, vCloud Air rebranding and the availability of new services, VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), and new product versions (vCloud Suite 5.8, betas of vSphere and VSAN).

Vmware 65

Vmware Architecture Applications Storage 65

Scott Lowe

JUNE 11, 2014

Anthony Burke’s series on VMware NSX continues with part 5. He makes comparisons among server virtualization, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and SDN, and feels that in order for SDN to really hit this market it needs to be “not a user-facing feature, but rather a means to an end” (his words). Networking. Virtualization.

Vmware 60

Vmware Storage Network Virtualization 60

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Bruce Davie and Martin Casado (with Nicira, now part of VMware) have written a post comparing the VXLAN and STT tunneling protocols. This VMware blog post helps explain the link between Puppet and vFabric Application Director, and why organizations may want to use both. has posted a good hypervisor feature comparison document.

Vmware 109

Vmware Virtualization Storage Hardware 109

Scott Lowe

MARCH 5, 2013

Although this post is a bit older (it’s from September of last year), it’s still an interesting comparison of both OpenStack and CloudStack. Although these posts are storage-related, the real focus is on how the storage stack is implemented in a virtualization solution, which is why I’m putting them in this section.

Virtualization 102

Virtualization Storage Vmware Network 102

Scott Lowe

OCTOBER 22, 2015

Here’s hoping I’ve managed to find something of value and interest to you in this latest collection of links and articles from around the web on networking, storage, virtualization, security, and other data center-related technologies. Juan Manuel Rey has a write-up on how easy it is to upgrade VIO (VMware Integrated OpenStack).

Vmware 60

Vmware Virtualization Guidelines Network 60