Content Catalog for VMworld 2019

The VMworld Content Catalog is now available to view. You can see it here and whether you’re a registered attendee or looking to see what’s on the schedule, the Content Catalog will help you get an idea of your schedule!

The catalog is to help you get an idea of the tracks and session types you may find interesting. The schedule builder is where you will build out your own schedule; this is currently available to those that have registered for VMworld. 

I have gone through the list and there is plenty to keep you busy, however, I thought I would offer some recommendations:

​NSX-T General

• Any of the NSX-T Deep Dive series – these are put on by the Technical Product Managers for their specific products
• Transitioning from NSX for vSphere to NSX-T [CNET1498BU]
• NSX-T Operations and Troubleshooting [CNET3048BU]
• NSX and Cisco ACI: Running Your SDDC on a Cisco Underlay [CNET1474BU]

NSX-T Design

• Next-Generation Reference Design with NSX-T: Part 1 [CNET2061BU]*
• Next-Generation Reference Design with NSX-T, Part 2 [CNET2068BU]*
• NSX-T End-to-End Design Deep Dive [CNET2086TU]
• NSX-T Design for Multi-Site Networking and Disaster Recovery [CNET1334BU]

Containers

• Cloud Native Fundamentals: Containers and Kubernetes 101 for the VI Admin [KUB1126BU]
• Introduction to Container Networking [CNET2604BU]
• NSX-T Deep Dive: Kubernetes Networking [CNET1270BU]
• NSX-T Design for Pivotal Application Service (PAS) [CNET1244BU]

vRealize

• Optimize and Troubleshoot NSX with vRealize Network Insight [CNET1960BU]

Cloud

• VMware Cloud on AWS: NSX-T Networking and Security Deep Dive [CNET2067BU]

Security

• NSX Service-Defined Firewall Reference Architecture Deep Dive  [SAI1452BU]
• NSX-T Advanced Security and Networking Service Insertion Deep Dive [SAI2781BU]

I have several areas I am focusing on this year. The first of these is NSX and the Virtual Cloud Network. I agree with VMware in saying "We are continuing a movement toward software-defined", and NSX is the backbone. It ties together all aspects of the data center, such as networking, security, EUC, and containers. With NSX you can bring network automation to your data center applications, containers,  along with security through micro-segmentation and third party service insertion.

​Virtual Cloud Networking is built on VMware NSX. It provides a secure, consistent, and agile foundation. As you can see from the graph below, software defined networking touches every aspect of our business. Whether you are in healthcare, looking to bring better security to your endpoints with NSX or looking to secure public cloud initiatives, Virtual Cloud Networking is the backbone to it all. 

My next focus area is containers. Specifically, a focus on offerings like vSphere Integrated Containers. This offering from VMware makes integrations with existing traditional applications easier to manage, deploy, and keep Highly Available (HA). If you are a heavy VMware shop, you are like most companies I encounter:  virtualizing 95% or more via vSphere.

Making the move into containers means that you will initially need to maintain traditional applications, such as vms, along side your new container environment.  This can introduce a lot of challenges and going "bare metal" can introduce further complications.  For example, ​when you run Kubernetes on bare metal, a simple NIC update can directly impact the Kubernetes host which complicates configuration management. You are responsible for verifying that the component is supported by Kubernetes. The same applies to central storage and network management. 

When we run Kubernetes on VMware vSphere, the VMware Hardware Compatibility List provides known working hardware for use with VMware vSphere. Virtualized hardware creates an abstraction that is supported by the underlying Linux distro. Decoupling the OS from the underlying hardware, reduces operational overhead for supported firmware versions of components. .

Running containers in a VMware environment allows you to keep running the traditional and containerized applications side-by-side, on a common platform. Having that common platform means bringing security, predictability, and agility into your infrastructure.  

This brings me to my last area of focus, while I am out at VMworld this year, VMware Cloud Foundations. VMware Cloud Foundations is an integrated software stack that bundles VMware vSphere with NSX and vSAN, into a single platform. This can be deployed on premises as a private cloud or ran as a service within a public cloud such as VMC on AWS. Cloud Foundations helps to remove the traditional silos in data centers, merging compute, storage and network to facilitate end-to-end support for application deployment and hybrid-cloud support. 

With VMware Cloud Foundations, you can move into a fully software-defined data center. Some of the benefits to this solution are storage elasticity with vSAN, end-to-end security with NSX, automation, better lifecycle management, self driving operations, and hybrid-cloud infrastructure. Which allows you to more seamlessly connect and manage hybrid-cloud offerings from VMware with VMC on AWS. 

VMC on AWS is a hybrid cloud service developed jointly by VMware and Amazon. Users can run a VMware software-defined data center on AWS with familiar enterprise tools. These tools are vSphere, NSX, and vSAN. The concept relies on running a native ESXi hyper-visor on AWS bare-metal instances, which enables direct access to the underlying server's processor and memory. 

You can learn about these products and much more. Register to attend VMworld 2019!