NSX

VCDX-NV – Design Defence

February 20, 2020 Chris Noon 3

I am waiting to hear back on my defence invite, but am preparing like I’ve been invited.  Solid advice any VCDX will give you. The design defence is an invitation to Palo Alto, Staines or Sydney to defend your design and run through a scenario.  In today’s blog, I am going to talk about my experience when preparing for the design defence. The design defence is you defending your submitted design.  This is a 75-minute window for you to present your submitted project and defend your design choices.  While it’s a 75-minute window, its recommended you prepare a c15-minute presentation.  The other 60 minutes will be used by the panellists to ask questions about anything relating to the submitted design. […]

HCX Service Mesh Considerations #HCX @VMwareHCX #vExpert

January 20, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 0

So let us have a quick overview of HCX Service Meshes before we continue: Service Meshes can contain all 3 appliances or just an Interconnect appliance or just a Layer 2 Ext appliance, depending on your needs. The WAN Optimiser is optional. Features are always being added to HCX, but these are the key services/appliances. The Interconnect (IX) appliance holds most of the services, I tell people to think of it as a vSphere Replication Manager, as that is one of the main services it holds. HCX uses vSphere Replication for all its replication bits, so the same pros and cons that apply to vSphere Replication apply here as well! How the Mesh is configured and deployed is dependant on […]

VCDX-NV – Document Submission

January 20, 2020 Chris Noon 3

To start my blogging career, I thought I would talk about my VCDX-NV journey. I’m currently in the waiting stage after submitting my documents.  Waiting for a VCDX panel to determine if my documentation warrants an invite to defend. Whilst waiting, I thought I’d take this time to share some advice that I found useful on my journey.  Firstly, read and understand the blueprint this can’t be stressed enough.  During your journey; you will find all VCDXs repeat this phrase to you, and it’s true.  The closer you get to the submission date the more the blueprint resonates. Read the submission document.  I read this at the very end, but I wish I had read it a few months before.  […]

VCF Everywhere

October 18, 2019 Stijn Depril 0

As an employee at VMware the only constant is change. Like our customers we are looking into creating a stack that is easy to built and operate in the most consistent way possible. Now that has been a challenge for any datacenter at scale. There were always teams in some dark corner in the datacenter experimenting with something different than the standard. Still in a majority of all datacenters across the globe vSphere is the standard virtualisation service. VMware as a company is been changing the company from a focus on server virtualisation to the virtualisation of all different component in the datacenter. As you know I’m looking into vSAN in the Benelux region. My role within VMware is changing […]

Passing the VCP-NV 2019 NSX-T 2.4 2V0-41.19 exam #NSX #vExpertNSX #vExpert

September 9, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

So as many of you will know, I am pretty savvy when it comes to DCV but when it comes to networking in general and especially networking virtualization…I am a rookie. I missed the NSX-V train, it passed me by while I was working on other things and with NSX-T being quite new…I thought now is as good of a time as any to get on board! Networking has always been a weak point of mine, and my goal is to change that. I don’t intend to become the next CCIE or anything like that, but I want to become a more rounded consultant and just have a good solid level of understanding in different areas. I booked myself on […]

NSX-T 2.4 Edge Failures

July 22, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

Introduction So in the first part Chris (@UltTransformer) and I (@Dark_KnightUK) played with and broke the NSX-T Manager.  We thought it was the Edges turn, so… Now to test Edge failures!   Let’s recap.  We have one(1) edge cluster with two(2) edge nodes of medium size.  We have a T1 configured that connects to two(2) T0’s (active/active) and both T0’s have”external” access (within the lab). All is good with the world! Edge Nodes Explained This is an interesting concept. Edge Transport Nodes are VMs, the Edge Nodes are containers/VRFs and the SR/DR are services deployed inside these containers/VRFs.  At least that’s the way we see it. You can have up to ten(10) Edge Nodes in a cluster. Edge Nodes can be […]

NSX-T v2.4 Manager Failures #RunNSX #VMware #Networking #SDDC @UltTransformer

July 12, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

Introduction So, I have started getting into the world of NSX-T, I pretty much missed the NSX-V train and while it is still early days in the T world, I wanted to get on board. This led me to attending the NSX-T v2.4 ICM and I have to say it has been one of the best courses I have ever attended. Our instructor seriously knew his stuff and the room was full of highly skilled networking and virtualisation guys. I asked lots and lots of questions and we had some very good discussions regarding topologies and packet flows etc. At the end of the 5th day, me and a couple of guys had some time to burn, and we started […]

Flashblog: DCIS-Cube

May 12, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

Over the last couple of months I had been involved in the development of the ‘DCIS-Cube’, the new architecture that will be used as a ‘portable’ and easy deploy-able system by NATO’s Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency). Portability and the ease of deployment of infrastructure in regions of deployment have always been challenging for the NCI. When they have to deploy a small datacenter to support a mission somewhere on the globe, they have to ship a couple of racks with hardware to that specific place.  Apart from the logistical nightmare of moving a ton of hardware,  they are struggling with the actual deployment of all that hardware as well. As every single mission has different requirements they can’t prepare the solution somewhere […]