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In my article Etherchannel and IP Hash or Load Based Teaming? I argued that using port channels and Etherchannel or LACP is an overly complex configuration that doesn’t offer much in terms of predictable load balance across host NICs. There is a lot more switch side configuration when you want to use LACP or Etherchannel and port-channels to your host NIC’s, for in most cases little benefit. In most common cases Load Based Teaming in vSphere is recommended with vSphere Distributed Switches.
However there are a number of situations where you really can’t avoid doing port-channels and LACP or Static Etherchannel load balancing to your hosts. One of those situations is where you wish to use a network virtualization product such as VMware NSX, and you wish to maximize performance and utilization of your host NIC’s. This article will focus on both the vSphere Host and physical switch side configuration to set up LACP on VMware vSphere 6.0 when using Dell Force10 Networks switches based on Cumulus Linux Network OS.
First we will start with the network configuration and then move onto the vSphere Host configuration. For those not familiar with Cumulus Linux you should check out the Cumulus Networks web site, as it makes networking easy enough even server administrators can do it, it’s just Linux. It’s suitable for small environments with limited administration staff, as everything can be easily automated using familiar automation tools and frameworks, for both server configuration to network configuration, and also for large scale environments that need to change and adapt rapidly. I’ve heard that Cumulus is popular with at least one of the large cloud / web-scale companies where they have thousands of switches.
Cumulus Linux offers comprehensive network functionality on a choice of hardware at a fraction of the cost of other network OS’s. In the examples presented here we use Dell Force10 switches to provide low latency, high performance and high reliability network fabric. Dell offers a choice of network OS on their Open Network compliant switches, including Cumulus Linux, Force10 OS, and BigSwitch. Dell provided the network switches for my lab environment and I use them for all the performance testing and validation that I perform on a day to day basis across business critical applications running in virtualized environments on Nutanix web-scale hyperconverged infrastructure.
Below I’ve provided two different ways of configuration for Cumulus Linux that will allow you to leverage LACP across a redundant switching fabric utilizing CLAG. This is similar to MLAG, or VLT in other switch configurations. The below configuration is for the leaf switches in a leaf and spine architecture, which is depicted in the image below. The first type of configuration leverages /etc/network/interfaces completely, and is a more manual configuration. The second way leverages mako templates, which are placed in /etc/network/interfaces.d, which automatically builds the configurations based on the template.
The first part of the configuration is to configure the links between the two top of rack or middle of rack leaf switches and the link to the spine.
LeafSwitch1 CLAG, Peer and Spine Config using /etc/network/interfaces:
# Spine Link auto spn1-2 iface spn1-2 bond-slaves swp49 swp50 bond-mode 802.3ad bond-miimon 100 bond-use-carrier 1 bond-min-links 1 bond-lacp-rate 1 bond-xmit_hash_policy layer3+4 clag-id 1 mstpctl-portnetwork no mtu 9216 # Peer Link auto pl iface pl bond-slaves swp51 swp52 bond-mode 802.3ad bond-miimon 100 bond-use-carrier 1 bond-min-links 1 bond-lacp-rate 1 bond-xmit_hash_policy layer3+4 mstpctl-portnetwork no mtu 9216 # CLAGD Peer Config auto pl.4000 iface pl.4000 address 172.16.0.1/30 clagd-enable yes clagd-priority 8192 clagd-peer-ip 172.16.0.2 clagd-backup-ip 192.168.255.12#MGMT IP Address of Peer clagd-sys-mac 44:38:39:ff:00:01
LeafSwitch2 CLAG, Peer and Spine Config using /etc/network/interfaces:
auto spn1-2 iface spn1-2 bond-slaves swp49 swp50 bond-mode 802.3ad bond-miimon 100 bond-use-carrier 1 bond-min-links 1 bond-lacp-rate 1 bond-xmit_hash_policy layer3+4 clag-id 1 mstpctl-portnetwork no mtu 9216 # Peer Link auto pl iface pl bond-slaves swp51 swp52 bond-mode 802.3ad bond-miimon 100 bond-lacp-rate 1 bond-use-carrier 1 bond-min-links 1 bond-xmit_hash_policy layer3+4 mstpctl-portnetwork no mtu 9216 # CLAGD Peer Config auto pl.4000 iface pl.4000 address 172.16.0.2/30 clagd-enable yes clagd-peer-ip 172.16.0.1 clagd-backup-ip 192.168.255.11 #MGMT IP Address of Peer clagd-sys-mac 44:38:39:ff:00:01
Next we need to define the port channels also known as bonds in Linux networking, which will be used by the hosts connected to the switches redundantly. This ensures there is no single point of failure on the network fabric to hosts. A bond consists of one of more physical ports connected to the hosts. The CLAG ID must be unique across all bonds.
Here is an example of a host port channel configured in /etc/network/interfaces
# Switch Port Interface Configuration # NXVMW Block Configuration auto nxvmw-node1 iface nxvmw-node1 bond-slaves swp1 bond-mode 802.3ad bond-lacp-rate 1 bond-min-links 1 bond-lacp-bypass-allow 1 bond-miimon 100 bond-xmit_hash_policy layer3+4 bridge-pvid 560 mstpctl-portadminedge yes mstpctl-bpduguard yes clag-id 2 mtu 9216
Now we have our uplinks to the spine and our downlinks to the hosts, we need our Bridge for all of the ports to connect to, in this case we will use VLAN-Aware Bridge, as we want to trunk VLAN’s to the host ports. A bridge in Linux networking for those not familiar is like a virtual switch that all physical and virtual ports connect to. In the case of Cumulus Linux the bridge is the ports that all of the hardware accelerated physical switch ports connect to. Individual ports to the hosts are created in bonds. Bridges can have multiple VLAN interfaces in addition to the physical switch port interfaces and bonds connected. You can use a glob to create a group of multiple similar interfaces in the specification as shown below. The example includes multiple VLAN’s, including some VLAN’s assigned with layer3 IP addresses.
# Bridge Configuration auto br0 iface br0 bridge-vlan-aware yes bridge-ports pl spn1-2 glob nxvmw-node1-4 glob nx3000-node1-4 bridge-stp on bridge-pvid 1 bridge-vids 100,560,570,580,590,600 bridge-mcsnoop 1 bridge-igmp-querier-src 192.168.245.211 mtu 9216 # Bridge VLAN auto br0.600 iface br0.600 address 172.16.100.211/23 broadcast 172.16.101.255 mtu 9216 auto br0.100 iface br0.100 address 192.168.245.211/24 broadcast 192.168.245.255 up ip route add 0.0.0.0/0 via 192.168.245.230 mtu 9216
ifupdown2 supports Mako templates natively, so you can configure templates such as below and put them in /etc/network/interfaces.d to achieve the same thing. The Mako templates allow a simple form of automation and programability for interface creation and configuration on Cumulus Linux. Customers could have a script or automation tool that configures their virtual environment and automatically applies the changes to mako templates on their Cumulus switches and updates the physical environment all in one go.
Here is the Mako template to configure clagd – /etc/network/interfaces.d/clag_cfg, this creates the peer links and all the CLAG configuration necessary.
<%
#INPUTS - Peer Link
lacp_mode = "fast" # or "slow" # Use for bond rate</pre>
peer_bond_name = "pl" # Name for the bond link
peer_port_start = 51
peer_port_end = 52
#INPUT - Clag Info
clag_vlan_id = 4000
clag_address = "172.16.0.2/30" #SP1 CLAG address
clag_peer_address = "172.16.0.1" # CLAG peer link address
clag_pair_unique_mac = "44:38:39:ff:ff:01" # Unique/reserved Per CLAG Pair MAC
clag_priority = 8192 # CLAG PRIORITY/Slave should be higher number, like 12288
clag_args = [] # OUTPUT
# Will create peer_slaves =
# Optional flags can be added over here.bond member matching list.
"glob swp[{0}-{1}]".format(peer_port_start, peer_port_end)
if clag_args:
clag_args_str = " ".join(clag_args)else:
clag_args_str = ""lacp_rate = 1 if "fast" in lacp_mode else 0 %>
auto ${peer_bond_name}
iface ${peer_bond_name}
bond-slaves ${peer_slaves}
bond-mode 802.3ad
bond-miimon 100
bond-use-carrier 1
bond-min-links 1
bond-lacp-rate ${lacp_rate}
bond-xmit-hash-policy layer3+4
mstpctl-portnetwork no
mtu 9216
auto ${peer_bond_name}.${clag_vlan_id}
iface ${peer_bond_name}.${clag_vlan_id}
address ${clag_address}
clagd-enable yes
clagd-priority ${clag_priority}
clagd-peer-ip ${clag_peer_address}
clagd-sys-mac ${clag_pair_unique_mac}
mtu 9216
%if clag_args_str:
clagd-args ${clag_args_str}
%endif
Here is a Mako template that could be used to configure the uplinks to the Spine switches – /etc/network/interfaces.d/spine_uplink_cfg
<%
# INPUT
# Tuple is of the form (name of bond, bond slaves, LACP RATE = 1/FAST or 0/SLOW)
deploy_uplink_bonds = [("spn1-2","swp49 swp50","1","1")]
%>
% for bond_name, bond_slaves, lacp_rate, clag_id in deploy_uplink_bonds:
auto ${bond_name}
iface ${bond_name}
bond-slaves ${bond_slaves}
bond-mode 802.3ad
bond-miimon 100
bond-lacp-rate ${lacp_rate}
bond-use-carrier 1
bond-min-links 1
bond-xmit_hash_policy layer3+4
clag-id {clag_id}
mstpctl-portnetwork no
mtu 9216
% endfor
Here is a Mako template that could be used to configure the host port channels aka bonds – /etc/network/interfaces.d/downlink_bonds_cfg
<%
# INPUT
# Tuple is of the form (name of bond, bond slaves, LACP RATE = 1/FAST or 0/SLOW, clag_id)
deploy_downlink_bonds = [("nxvmw-node1","swp1","1","2"),
("nxvmw-node2","swp2","1","3"),
("nxvmw-node3","swp47","1","4"),
("nxvmw-node4","swp48","1","5")] %>
% for bond_name, bond_slaves, lacp_rate, clag_id in deploy_downlink_bonds:
auto ${bond_name}
iface ${bond_name}
bond-slaves ${bond_slaves}
bond-mode 802.3ad
bond-miimon 100
bond-lacp-rate ${lacp_rate}
bond-min-links 1
bond-lacp-rate 1
bond-lacp-bypass-allow 1
bridge-pvid 560
mstpctl-portadminedge yes
mstpctl-bpduguard yes
clag-id {clag_id}
bond-xmit-hash-policy layer3+4
mtu 9216
% endfor
In a future article I will cover a similar configuration with Dell Force10 switches and the Dell Force10 Network OS (FTOS), in addition to VMware NSX and VXLAN configuration.
To use LACP in vSphere you need to be on vSphere 5.1 or above, and to have configured your vSphere Distributed Switch for LACP. If you’re running vSphere 5.5 or above it’s recommended that you use Enhanced LACP, which offers additional load balancing methods. The load balancing method I’ve found most useful in my tests is depicted in the vDS configuration image below, which is based on a vDS version 6.0:
With vSphere 6.0 vDS you can configure up to 64 port channels, known as Link Aggregation Groups (LAG’s) per Host and up to 32 ports per LAG. It is recommended you review the other relevant vSphere Configuration Maximums.
You will connect your hosts directly to a port on the LAG and not a standard vDS uplink. The LAG then appears as a single interface in the port group configuration. The below image shows the host 10GbE NIC’s connected to a LAG on a vDS.
When you are configuring the vDS port groups that VM’s will connect to you need to ensure that only the LAG is present as the active interface. All other interfaces should be marked as unused. However during migration you can mark the LAG as active and another interface as stand by, until you’ve migrated all physical and virtual interfaces to the LAG. It is recommended you read the migrating to LAG guidance on the Enhanced LACP Configuration of the vDS. The below image shows an example of the vDS Portgroup configuration.
When using a LAG the Load Balancing method in the Portgroup configuration does not apply.
As far as performance goes I’ve successfully tested hosts maxed out with 2 x 10GbE Links doing full duplex traffic to wire speed, i.e. 4.8GBytes/s and latency as low as 70us, even when using VMware NSX and VXLAN overlay networks.
Final Word
When you need to use LACP and port channels / LAG’s for VMware vSphere, using Cumulus Linux on your physical network switches provides an easy way to get up and running quickly and provide configuration automation. The above configurations can be used and reused as much as you like. You can also download a free version of Cumulus Linux VX, which simulates the physical network configurations, before you apply it to physical switches.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2015 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
Cumulus Linux is the answer to companies that want to run software defined networking on a range of open networks industry standard switches, without necessarily being locked into one physical switch hardware vendor. But unlike network virtualization solutions such as NSX, Cumulus Linux is the Network OS (NOS) for the physical switches, rather than a virtualization layer on top. Cumulus is part of the NSX ecosystem and integrated into NSX, so essentially you can use Cumulus to run on the physical switches and integrate it to NSX to provide the network virtualization (termination and VXLAN switching/routing in hardware also supported on some switches). Cumulus is Linux for network switches, so it’s easy to manage, and very easy to automate. I happen to be working on a project now to build the best practices for Cumulus Linux with Nutanix and VMware vSphere. So I needed an easy way to get Cumulus installed on my lab switches, from my MacBook Pro, which is what the remainder of this article is about.
You can choose open network (ON) switches from a variety of vendors that are on the Cumulus HCL. In my case I chose Dell Force10 S4810-ON‘s. The -ON is an important part, as that is the Open Network variety. The Dell Force10 Switches are enterprise class low latency switches. The -ON switches come with the Open Network Install Environment included, so that you can install Cumulus Linux. This is the default boot environment for the switches and starts automatically.
There are 6 ways you can install Cumulus Linux NOS on your Open Network switches as follows:
In my case I had DHCP configured for my management network so I just needed an easy way to start up a web server so the switches could discover the Cumulus Linux firmware and download and install it. As a tip, if you don’t have a DHCP server already you can configure your MacBook Pro for Internet sharing, which then starts a DHCP server. Setting up the web server was a lot easier than I thought it would be. It turns out there is a very easy way to start up a temporary HTTP server on a MacBook Pro from any directory through the terminal. I stumbled across an article titled Start a Simple Web Server from Any Directory on Your Mac. All I had to do was change to the directory containing the Cumulus Linux package, which I had renamed to work with the ONIE process. But there was one key element missing from the article that I needed in order to get it to work.
If you attempt to run the web server exactly as mentioned in the Life Hacker article, such as python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80, you will get the following:
michael2012mbp:Cumulus michaelwebster$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py”, line 162, in _run_module_as_main “__main__”, fname, loader, pkg_name)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py”, line 72, in _run_code exec code in run_globals
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/SimpleHTTPServer.py”, line 224, in <module> test()
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/SimpleHTTPServer.py”, line 220, in test BaseHTTPServer.test(HandlerClass, ServerClass)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/BaseHTTPServer.py”, line 595, in test httpd = ServerClass(server_address, HandlerClass)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/SocketServer.py”, line 419, in __init__ self.server_bind()
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/BaseHTTPServer.py”, line 108, in server_bind SocketServer.TCPServer.server_bind(self)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/SocketServer.py”, line 430, in server_bind self.socket.bind(self.server_address)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/socket.py”, line 224, in meth return getattr(self._sock,name)(*args)
socket.error: [Errno 13] Permission denied
This was easily fixed by using the sudo command, entering the admin password, and running the operation as root. Which resulted in the following:
michael2012mbp:Cumulus michaelwebster$ sudo python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80
WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your typing when using sudo. Type “man sudo” for more information.
To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.
Password:
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 80 …
Then it was just a matter of kicking off the discovery process on my S4810 switches, which I did by rebooting them via the console cable (which happens to be connected via USB to a VDI desktop running on one of my Nutanix hosts, and it even still works with vMotion).
Once the switches restarted they found my MacBook on the network and found the web server and began to search for the firmware. ONIE goes through a standard process to identify and download the correct firmware by using the following naming conventions from the most specific to the lest specific:
In my case it looked like this from the web server on my MacBook Pro:
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] “GET /onie-installer-powerpc-dni_7448-r0 HTTP/1.1” 404 –
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] code 404, message File not found
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] “GET /onie-installer-powerpc-dni_7448 HTTP/1.1” 404 –
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] code 404, message File not found
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] “GET /onie-installer-dni_7448 HTTP/1.1” 404 –
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] code 404, message File not found
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] “GET /onie-installer-powerpc HTTP/1.1” 404 –
xxx.xxx.xxx.11 – – [13/Nov/2014 19:31:34] “GET /onie-installer HTTP/1.1” 200 –
As you can guess from the above I had named the Cumulus Linux package onie-installer. I could have named it onie-installer-powerpc or any one of the other specific naming conventions. If this was a large scale environment it would be best to set up the distribution point using specific names for each model of system in the environment. Although the Dell S4810’s are PowerPC based some switches are x86_64 based, such as the Dell S6000-ON 40GbE switches.
Final Word
The process I used to get Cumulus Linux installed on my lab switches is probably fine for small scale environments and PoC’s. For large scale you will want something more robust and automated. One of the great things about Cumulus being Linux for switches is that it can fit into you existing Linux management and automation frameworks, such as Puppet, Chef and CFEngine. You can completely automate the configuration and management of a large scale switching environment, which when combined with network virtualization by NSX can become incredibly agile and flexible for any type of application workload. I’m working with Cumulus and I will be documenting the official best practices for Cumulus with Nutanix and it will be published on the Nutanix web site once we’re done. Along the way I will bring you any interesting things that I find.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
Another VMworld event is over and it’s hard to believe it’s been a whole 12 months since the last one. Certainly during the keynotes there was a lot of coverage about what VMware has achieved over the last 12 months and it is impressive especially in the end user computing and hybrid cloud spaces. But overall I felt that VMworld USA 2014 lacked some of the sparkle of last year. But I guess it’s hard to top last year considering it was the 10th anniversary. This year seemed much more about building a solid foundation for a software defined datacenter, a software defined enterprise and a hybrid cloud model integrating applications with infrastructure, providing ability and flexibility, but without compromise. Although attendance was flat or a little down on last year the breakout sessions were packed, right up to the last session on Thursday. Instead of having our heads in the clouds this year it was all about the vCloud Air, and we vRealized the product naming is about to be changing. So lets dive into what I think are some of the highlights.
My VMworld started on Sunday with a Nutanix sponsored VCDX study group. Nutanix is a big supporter of the VCDX program for the entire community. The study group was put on for candidates that wanted to know more about the VCDX process and practice the design and troubleshooting scenarios. It was completely vendor agnostic, and it needs to stay that way. Nutanix understands that the only way sponsoring a VCDX study group can be of value is if the content is vendor agnostic and covers a wide range of topics. There were many VCDX helping in the room and giving advice from across many companies. This really is what the community is all about. Everyone helping each other.
Then I moved on to opening acts at VMunderground that was put on by vBrownBag. I was on the storage panel and it was a good discussion around Virtual Volumes, Hyper Convergence and Flash. I even agreed with a traditional SAN vendor that hyper converged appliances will not help SuperDomes and Mainframes, but then again I can always migrate the workloads and processes off those systems, and the Unix mid range systems as well, to a Hyper Converged world. SuperDomes, Mainframes and Unix systems is where the legacy SAN technology will stay for the foreseeable future and it will be a decline over a number of years, just like we’ve seen with the traditional big iron systems themselves. The move away from traditional SAN for x86 connected environments isn’t going to happen over night, but it’s a trend that is starting to take hold, but honestly it’s not even scratching the surface of the potential opportunity yet. The announcements from VMware and EMC around their hyper-converged offerings are just more validation of that. Flash is definitely the way of the future, and it opens up things that were previously not possible. I have a section on flash technology in the storage chapter of Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware.
There were a number of VMware announcements during the keynotes that are worth mentioning. But before I do I have to get something off my chest. vRealise is the worst name ever thought of for anything. My initial reaction to the new name for VMware’s hybrid cloud, vCloud Air was somewhat similar, but at least Air has a cool ring to it, like iPad Air for example. vRealize, just NO! I feel sorry for the sales team who have to try and sell that now. Ok, rant over. The overall themes about this being a brave new world and requiring bravery from all of the customers and the community participants was interesting. I’ve been doing virtualization for a very long time and even for business critical apps it’s a very safe bet. But SDDC and the Software Defined Enterprise going to further reduce silos and this will require some organisational changes and maturity. This is really where the bravery comes in, most of the challenges are not technical.
Two major overall themes were used during the keynotes. Firstly – “Compatibility, Compliance, Choice”, and secondly the “Power of &”. VMware has done a great job of building a partner ecosystem across a number of technologies, including the vCloud Air Network, which has 3900 partners, and the broader ecosystem around the hypervisor and NSX. This is where compatibility, compliance and choice really comes in. Seamless compatibility, compliance with regulatory and industry requirements, and choice of multiple partners and technologies. This is then extended to the OpenStack, NSX and Containers, which can run extremely well in a VMware environment, and this is the Power of &. Have your containers without compromise. Have your OpenStack on a platform easily fit on top of VMware vSphere.
By far the biggest highlight was meeting a lot of people who regularly read my blog and have benefited from the work that I and others in the community have done over the years. This is why we keep doing it. Because it makes a difference. It was also great to meet a lot of people who had bought Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware: Doing IT Right, and had got a lot out of it too. My co-authors, Michael Corey, Jeff Szastak and I were blown away by the stories that were relayed to us about how the book had helped people, especially when it was being used to explain to DBA’s how virtualization works and that SQL is a great candidate for virtualization. The book was so popular that it actually sold out at VMworld, and we had a lot of people come up to us during the meet the authors session and book signing.
Here is a photo of my co-authors and I with the happy customer who purchased the very last copy of our book at VMworld.
Shortly after the above photo was Michael Corey and I recorded an interview with VMworld TV’s Eric Sloof regarding virtualizing SQL Server Databases on VMware.
I was lucky again this year to present a session that was included in the top 10 sessions of VMworld for the second consecutive year – VMworld 2014 SDDC1600 Art of IT Infrastructure Design The Way of the VCDX Panel.
Final Word
It was another great VMworld and a very successful VMworld. I’m very much looking forward to next year. Hopefully we’ll see the return of the Monster VM sessions and some other business critical apps sessions from me in next years VMworld.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) kicked off today in sunny San Francisco with a great keynote presentation from a number of key VMware executives. This year VMware introduced a new term to the partner community, the Software-Defined Enterprise. SDE is where every component of IT is virtualized, abstracted, pooled, and automated. VMware spoke about their Network Virtualization and Software-Defined Storage initiatives. This article will cover some of the highlights.
VMware has continued to grow in the face of a very mature virtualization market in a lot of regions. It’s impressive for a company with over $5B in revenue to keep growing at almost 20%, but with NSX I have a feeling that they’re only just getting started. It’s good for partners that over 85% of revenue goes through the channel and all of the speakers reiterated VMware’s commitment to the partners. However with some of their more disruptive strategies it’s inevitable that VMware will step on the toes of partners in all areas where they do business. This is the new frienemy reality of business.
The good news for partners is the $50B opportunity from VMware’s three key focus areas, EUC, Hybrid Cloud and SDE – formally SDDC. The SDE or Software-Defined Enterprise is Software-Defined Everything. The services opportunity alone that would be attached to this infrastructure opportunity would probably be 2X. All of these areas of focus are growing by at least 20% CAGR.
The major challenge for VMware to execute on and deliver on this vision is the lack of skilled resources inside partners and customers that can successfully integrate multiple technology areas. VMware has been investing heavily in their education programs, including VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX), but they now need to take this to the next level. Without advanced certifications the ability to implement technology will lag and as an extension, so may sales. Otherwise the risk is sales continue at a significant pace and all of the software becomes shelfware that nobody implements. On the one hand VMware is hiring and focusing resources around their three key target areas of EUC, SDDC and Hybrid Cloud, but they seem to have missed the important integration between them all that needs to take place. This requires experienced architects that can cover multiple disciplines during all phases including pre-sales and delivery.
VMware also seems to be missing another major market opportunity that exists, which is migrating traditional applications from Unix platforms to vSphere. I’ve personally championed this cause for a long time very successfully and the market opportunity is significant. VMware’s data suggests that > 65% of all workloads are virtualized (Estimated at ~80% by end of 2014), however that data only covers x86. They don’t even produce data on the Unix market, and in many countries there is a significant install base that is ripe for the taking. In a lot of cases the migration approach is not that difficult either, there is a lot of low hanging fruit. There was not a single session on this area, nor anyone at the VMware Booth in the Solutions Exchange that could talk to Business Critical Apps, or these Unix to vSphere migration opportunities. Perhaps some yet to be announced plans will address this gap.
VMware announced the three imperatives or prime directives of their strategy as follows:
Virtualize All The Things – Networking!
Ever since VMworld 2013 NSX has been on the minds of many. NSX will allow customers the choice of any networking hardware, any hypervisor, and any cloud management platform to automate the provisioning and operations of their entire network stack, while seamlessly integrating existing physical platforms. Given that virtual networking at the edge has surpassed physical network ports this puts VMware in a strong position to leverage this wave of virtualization for massive profits. Although they didn’t specifically outline how the partners will get their share. Currently NSX is sold directly, but as it matures and becomes more accessible and democratised I’m sure the partners will be an important channel to market. With the amount of pent up demand for the moment there is plenty of people beating down VMware’s door to get NSX. The biggest thing about NSX in my opinion is the policy based management that can automatically and intelligently program the network based on specific conditions and it’s scale out nature that removes many traditional bottlenecks that plague traditional networking and security solutions. The match of NSX and scalable converged infrastructure is a perfect solution to the Software-defined Enterprise and Datacenter of the future. I think Nutanix is in prime position to take advantage of this, especially given it has many of the same philosophies of NSX – scalable, on demand, software-defined converged infrastructure.
Virtualize All The Things – Storage!
There wasn’t many surprises in the Software-Defined Storage announcements other than partners will get up to 20% incentive to sell VMware’s solutions and could win a Tesla S. But the one thing that did catch my eye was VMware’s inclusion of cloud based object storage as part of the storage strategy going forward. VMware is also making a play at the hypervisor-converged infrastructure market, which is great news for the vendors already in this space. The VMware marketing machine is going to be validating already customer proven solutions and the leaders in the market for converged solutions, such as Nutanix, which is uncompromisingly simple. The more awareness and education in this space the better. While VMware’s SDS product might be as easy as three clicks, Nutanix offers a mature and proven solution in no clicks at all, with zero to Software-Defined Datacenter in 30 minutes. There is no doubt that there will be plenty of choice for customers, but I’m not sure they really want to take on the role of being the underlying storage platform architects in their datacenters. I think VMware has done a good job and their solutions give the existing market players a good reason to continue to aggressively innovate their solutions, which I know will definitely happen.
Applications go Hybrid – Cloud to the People!
Applications Rule and 5700 are supported on vSphere and 120 Operating Systems (If the Apps are so important why no Business Critical Apps guys on the booth and no Unix to VMware session? Excuse the broken record). vSphere 5.5 was a rock solid release and has pushed the bar further so that almost everything is now a virtualization candidate. Extending this further into hybrid cloud with the VMware vCHS service and VMware’s VSPP program gives customers complete choice while providing a seamless management experience. What I didn’t see from the management tools strategy was integrated multi-tenancy so that the cloud providers could provide tenant views. But I guess that makes sense as VMware wants every customer to purchase and consume their own management tools across the hybrid environment, instead of them being provided as a service. The combination of vCHS and VSPP Partners allows the clouds to move closer to the consumers, which will ultimately grow adoption and consumption for the benefit of all.
The market opportunity is expected to exceed $30B by 2017. Good news for the partners that have invested in building a VSPP business. Even better news is the continued investment in vCloud Director for Cloud Providers. Now all they need to do is innovate and provide a scalable infrastructure that doesn’t cost the earth. Plugging the same old enterprise kit together the same ways as we always have isn’t going to deliver the economics that customers want. An uncompromisingly simple infrastructure platform that is linearly scaleable, automatic, self healing, robust, mature and reliable is what is needed. This is exactly what Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform provides and we’re putting the hard work in so our partners and customers can wear the Nutanix grin :).
Final Word
VMware and its partners, including it’s integration and technology alliance partners are in prime position to benefit from the Software-Defined Enterprise of the future. VMware is committed to the channel and to continuous innovation across the three focus areas. VMware’s entrance into the Converged market is great news for the existing players and customers alike. No doubt we’ll continue to see many improvements and innovations in 2014, 2015 and beyond. I couldn’t think of a better time to be in IT, and to be in the engineering side of the most positively disruptive technology revolution of the next decade or more, exciting!
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This post appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com, by Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.