Scott Lowe

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

The rise of the disaggregated network operating system (NOS) marches on: this time, it’s Big Switch Networks announcing expanded hardware support in Open Network Linux (ONL) , upon which its own NOS is based. Servers/Hardware. Cormac Hogan has a brief update on storage options for containers on VMware. Check this out.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Storage Load Balancer 60

Scott Lowe

APRIL 15, 2022

Xavier Avrillier walks readers through using Antrea (a Kubernetes CNI built on top of Open vSwitch—a topic I’ve touched on a time or two) to provide on-premise load balancing in Kubernetes. Servers/Hardware. Cabling is hardware, right? Levent Ogut takes a deep dive into Kubernetes init containers.

Linux 74

Linux Load Balancer IPv6 Licensing 74

Scott Lowe

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

VMware recently released a reference design guide for NSX-T; see here for more details. Viktor van den Berg writes on deploying NSX load balancers with vRA. Servers/Hardware. Dimitri de Swart has a write-up on LAMP stacks made easy with VMware and Puppet. I hope it proves useful! Networking. Larry Smith Jr.

Vmware 60

Vmware Load Balancer Network Open Source 60

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 27, 2021

Servers/Hardware. Rudi Martinsen has an article on changing the Avi load balancer license tier (this is in the context of using it with vSphere with Tanzu). Eric Sloof has information on how to disable VMware plugins in vCenter Server (the context of the article is security vulnerabilities disclosed in plugins).

Linux 90

Linux Load Balancer Malware Virtualization 90

Scott Lowe

JUNE 8, 2018

Kamal Kyrala discusses a method for accessing Kubernetes Services without Ingress, NodePort, or load balancers. Servers/Hardware. What I found interesting is that the local NVMe storage is also hardware encrypted. VMware rock star Frank Denneman provides an introduction to Elastic DRS , a feature of VMware Cloud on AWS.

Load Balancer 60

Load Balancer Vmware Storage Intel 60

Scott Lowe

APRIL 30, 2013

Last week I had the opportunity to join John Troyer on the VMware Communities podcast. My purpose, as John put it when he invited me, was to “gently introduce” the community to the idea of network virtualization, which is where I now spend most of my time since joining VMware in early February. emphasis mine).

Virtualization 134

Virtualization Network Vmware Load Balancer 134

Scott Lowe

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

The “TL;DR” for those who are interested is that this solution bypasses the normal iptables layer involved in most Kubernetes implementations to load balance traffic directly to Pods in the cluster. Servers/Hardware. Unfortunately, this appears to be GKE-specific. Nothing this time around.

Load Balancer 60

Load Balancer Cloud Applications Vmware 60

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Looking for a step-by-step install guide for VMware NSX? Ray Budavari—who is an absolutely fantastic NSX resource—has a blog post up on the integration between VMware NSX and vRealize Automation. If you’d like to play around with Cumulus Linux but don’t have a compatible hardware switch, Cumulus VX is the answer. Networking.

Vmware 60

Vmware Linux Architecture Hardware 60

Scott Lowe

AUGUST 27, 2021

Servers/Hardware. Rudi Martinsen has an article on changing the Avi load balancer license tier (this is in the context of using it with vSphere with Tanzu). Eric Sloof has information on how to disable VMware plugins in vCenter Server (the context of the article is security vulnerabilities disclosed in plugins).

Linux 60

Linux Load Balancer Malware Virtualization 60

Scott Lowe

NOVEMBER 9, 2018

Continuing on that Envoy theme, you may find this article by Matt Klein—one of the primary authors of Envoy—helpful in understanding some of the concepts behind modern load balancing and proxying. Servers/Hardware. Fellow VMware alum Steve Flanders has a write-up on running Kubernetes locally (on a Mac).

Load Balancer 60

Load Balancer Operating Systems Intel Hardware 60

Scott Lowe

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Servers/Hardware. Sean Collins has an article on building a cheap, compact, and multinode DevStack environment for a home lab that lays out some server hardware decisions and the tools he uses to manage them. William Lam shares an article on using Ansible to provision Kubernetes on VMware Photon. Docker and Solaris Zones?

Vmware 60

Vmware Network Load Balancer Linux 60

Scott Lowe

SEPTEMBER 22, 2017

Servers/Hardware. Massimo Re Ferre has a great article discussing VMware Cloud on AWS versus Azure Stack and breaking down the differences between the two approaches. John Kozej walks through how to configure vCenter HA using the NSX load balancer. Ivan Pepelnjak speaks frankly about VMware Cloud on AWS.

Storage 60

Storage Vmware Load Balancer Network 60

Scott Lowe

OCTOBER 5, 2012

Some folks from Nicira (now part of VMware) recently published a blog post discussing the OVSDB IETF draft (see here ). Servers/Hardware. If storage is your thing—especially in VMware environments—I’d recommend having a look at Cormac Hogan’s blog for his series on vSphere 5.1 Networking. It starts here.

Storage 92

Storage Vmware Linux Virtualization 92

Scott Lowe

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

VM-to-VM (on the same host) via a hardware-based virtual switch in an SR-IOV network interface card (NIC). VMDq can provide a hardware assist when the hypervisor softswitch is involved, or you can use hypervisor bypass and SR-IOV to attach VMs directly to VFs (virtual functions). Note that there are trade-offs as a result.)

Intel 109

Intel Virtualization Data Center Network 109

Scott Lowe

JUNE 21, 2019

David Holder walks through removing unused load balancer IP allocations in NSX-T when used with PKS. Servers/Hardware. Software company Agile Bits recently announced support for U2F-compatible hardware security keys in their 1Password product. I’m looking forward to seeing how NaaS evolves. Virtualization.

Network 60

Network Load Balancer Storage Applications 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. The UCS Manager software bundled with the system provides core functionality (see diagram, right).

Analysis 147

Analysis HP Data Center Virtualization 147

The Accidental Successful CIO

AUGUST 3, 2011

This low level software allowed multiple applications to run on the same physical hardware but believe that they had the box all to themselves. This resulted in the IT department having to maintain farms of servers that were all horribly underutilized. The arrival of virtualization software changed everything. No related posts.

Virtualization 100

Virtualization Load Balancer Data Center Vmware 100

Scott Lowe

DECEMBER 6, 2012

First up is Brent Salisbury’s how to build an SDN lab without needing OpenFlow hardware. Bruce Davie and Martin Casado (with Nicira, now part of VMware) have written a post comparing the VXLAN and STT tunneling protocols. Servers/Hardware. I needed to fill in some other knowledge gaps first.) Why is this important?

Vmware 109

Vmware Virtualization Storage Hardware 109

Virtualized Greek

AUGUST 27, 2013

Kit Colbert (VMware Principal Architect) & Carl Ecshenbach (VMware COO) Joe Baguley (VMware CTO, EMEA). VMware is talking about the business of IT and how they enable their own business to deliver applications. VMware is of course pushing their virtual SAN solution (vSAN) to provision and control storage.

Vmware 58

Vmware Load Balancer Data Center Virtualization 58

Scott Lowe

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

Tom’s key point is that disaggregating software from hardware—which is kind of a given if you’re buying whitebox networking gear—gives you the (potential) flexibility to repurpose network gear based on the software running on it. Servers/Hardware. However, it’s at least possible with whitebox networking gear. Virtualization.

Open Source 60

Open Source Vmware Network IBM 60

Data Center Knowledge

JULY 17, 2013

The latter can be open-source software such as OpenStack, CloudStack or commercial products such as Citrix CloudPlatform or VMware Cloud Director (VCD). The user level elements that are managed within such an IaaS cloud are virtual servers, cloud storage and shared resources such as load balancers and firewalls.

Data Center 203

Data Center Cloud Data Applications 203

Fountainhead

DECEMBER 8, 2009

The next step is to define in software the converged network, its switching, and even network devices such as load balancers. Provisioning of the network, VLANs, IP load balancing, etc. By integrating with VMware's Virtual Center, Xsigo provided a building block. This permits physically flatter networks.

Data Center 113

Data Center Virtualization Load Balancer Network 113

Fountainhead

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Existing physical IO but with address hardware-based mapping/virtualization (e.g. In much the same way that the hypervisor has since been embedded in tools like VMware’s vCenter, IOV can (and has been) embedded with higher-level management tools. Converged Networking Adapters (e.g. Qlogic , Emulex ). HP VirtualConnect ).

Virtualization 157

Virtualization Data Center Network Storage 157