Deploy and configure VMware NSX in 23 minutes

May 26, 2016 / Martijn / 0 Comments

VMware NSX is completely software based. This means it’s flexible as heck and you can have a lot of instances running concurrently. It also means you can go crazy with your network topology designs and amount of tinkering you can do with your virtual network. I am someone who loves to tinker. Sometimes a bit too much. A consequence of this, is that I sometimes break my virtual test lab and have to re-install it and return to the starting point. This has happened a few times.

I also like to use clean labs for customer demo purposes, just to … Read more

VMware NSX PowerShell Extension Open Sourced

February 1, 2016 / Martijn / 0 Comments

VMware NSX has an open API and it’s pretty easy to consume. PowerShell is the same way; it’s easy to learn and easy to extend. This week, Anthony Burke and Nick Bradford released a PowerShell extension called PowerNSX. As the name suggests, it’s all about managing VMware NSX.

Nick and Anthony put PowerNSX on Bitbucket, which means there will be a continuos release cycle (whenever someone pushes something to the Git repository). You can download and install PowerNSX using Git or by downloading the branch as a zipfile.

Prerequisites

To run PowerNSX, you need a couple of things pre-installed … Read more

Introducing the VMware NSX for vSphere PHP Framework

January 22, 2016 / Martijn / 0 Comments

Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a VMware NSX integration with one of my existing PHP applications. This application is tied into a development process with a new testing schematic which needed to use a the NSX features to test the code inside a tiered network setup. Of course, this needed to be automated and available on demand; enter the NSX API. Using the NSX API, I’ve been able to integrate network deployment and configuration inside the existing application (with not a lot of effort).

After getting a few requests from fellow NSX enthusiasts, I’ve decided … Read more

Ravello Systems: VMware NSX 6.2 Management Service Stuck in ‘Starting’

January 3, 2016 / Martijn / 0 Comments

Ravello Systems offers ‘Smart Labs’ where you can run a multitude of applications in Amazon or Google Cloud, including nested ESXi Hypervisors. This opens up the possibility of replacing a home lab system, where you have noisy power guzzling servers set up at your home and move your test lab to the cloud. I have been using Ravello for a while and just got around to upgrading my VMware NSX blueprint to NSX 6.2.1, which is where I ran into an issue:

The NSX Management Service did not start on boot; it was stuck in ‘Starting..’ for about 5 minutes … Read more

The Future of Virtual Networking from VMworld – Part 2

October 26, 2015 / Martijn / 0 Comments

Following up on my post The Future of Virtual Networking from VMworld – Part 1 (read that before starting this one), I’m going to continue rambling on about some of the awesome future networking ideas floating around during VMworld.

Disclaimer: this post is also based on public roadmap information divulged by VMware and can be subject to change. Also, some of this is my interpretation of the features.

Distributed Load Balancing

With traditional load balancing, network traffic goes through an appliance (physical or virtual) before it connects to the actual target (load balanced server). This is set up this way … Read more

The Future of Virtual Networking from VMworld – Part 1

October 18, 2015 / Martijn / 0 Comments

VMworld Europe took place in Barcelona last week and my experience was mostly centered around NSX. A few technical sessions and a lot of meetings later, I have been given an insight into the future of virtual networking and it’s awesome! In a mini series (otherwise it’d be much too long and windy) of posts, I am going to discuss my interpretation on how this will look.

Disclaimer: this post is based on public roadmap information divulged by VMware (mostly the great mind Bruce Davie) and can be subject to change. Also, some of this is my interpretation of

VMware NSX 6.2: Support for Multiple vCenters

August 21, 2015 / Martijn / 0 Comments

VMware NSX 6.2 dropped yesterday with some pretty awesome features. I’ll be going through most features in separate posts and this one is for the Cross-vCenter feature. Before 6.2, the NSX Manager and vCenter had a one to one relationship, making certain dual datacenter designs quite difficult. Unless you had deployed stretched clusters, your network policies were linked to one site (unless you scripted your way out). With NSX 6.2, this changes in a big way.

NSX 6.2 introduces Cross-vCenter, which allows you to deploy multiple NSX Managers (up to eight!) that synchronise their configuration. The NSX … Read more

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