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VMware Networking & Storage

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vSphere 5.5 Documentation Center. Storage technologies for ESXi | VMware ESXi. ESXi hosts support host-level storage virtualization, which logically abstracts the physical storage layer from virtual machines. The following storage technologies are supported by ESXi: 1. Direct-attached storage – internal hard disks or external storage systems attached to the ESXi host through a direct connection using procotols such as SAS or SATA. This type of storage does not require a storage network to communicate with your host, but prevents you from using vSphere features that require shared storage, such as High Availability and vMotion. 2. 3. 4. 5. Virtual machines use virtual disks to store their operating system, program files, and other data. Vsphere esxi vcenter server 60 storage guide. VMware To Complete Storage Virtualization With VVols.

VMware launched its Virtual SAN (VSAN) hyperconverged storage for its vSphere virtualized servers last fall and started shipping it this spring and has seen very good uptake of the technology, with 12,000 beta tests through the spring and more than 300 customers in production in the first three months of commercial availability. But that is not the end of the virtual storage story at VMware. The next release of the hypervisor will include a feature called Virtual Volumes, or VVols for short, and this type of storage virtualization will be employed across all kinds of devices to virtualize the data plane between virtual machines and physical storage devices.

In a way, VSAN offers a kind of preview of the VVols technology. In a software-defined everything world, every element of compute, storage, and networking should be individually and programmatically managed with the option of then grouping elements together to be managed as a whole when it is appropriate. Share this: VMware launches virtual SAN software. VMware has introduced software designed to make it much easier for its customers to store large numbers of virtual machines (VMs) created with the company’s software.

“It is about management simplification,” said Alberto Farronato, VMware director of product marketing for storage and availability. The software, VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN), is the company’s first foray into storage virtualization. The company made its name offering server virtualization and is also ramping up offerings for desktop and network virtualization as well. The software provides storage space for the virtual disks (VDs) that hold the data needed to run VMs. The vSAN software is built directly into the kernel of VMware vSphere, the company’s virtualization OS. “If you know how to manage vSphere, you already know how to manage Virtual SAN,” Farronato said.

“We have interoperability with all the key features of the vSphere platform.” Virtual storage software is nothing new. VMware vSAN costs US$2,495 per processor. Review: VMware Virtual SAN turns storage inside-out. Convergence of compute and storage is all the rage in the virtualization market these days. You see it in Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and Storage Spaces. You see it in third-party platforms such as Nutanix. And you see it in VMware's vSphere flagship with the addition of Virtual SAN, a new capability built into the ESXi hypervisor that turns the direct-attached storage in vSphere cluster nodes into highly available, high-performance shared storage.

The goals behind Virtual SAN, or VSAN, are both to lower overall storage costs and to eliminate the I/O latencies associated with networked storage. VSAN achieves high availability by replicating storage objects (virtual machine disks, snapshot images, VM swap disks) across the cluster, allowing admins to specify the number of failures (nodes, drives, or network) to be tolerated on a per-VM basis. . [ Virtualization showdown: Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 vs. Software-Defined Shared Storage Features: VMware Virtual SAN.

Contact Sales 1-877-486-9273 Virtual SAN VMware Virtual SAN is a radically simple, enterprise-class storage solution, enabling an ideal hyperconverged infrastructure for vSphere virtual machines. Try for Free Contact Sales Find a Reseller Virtual SAN 6.1 delivers a mature, enterprise-level storage solution All-Flash architecture with SSD data persistence: Deploy an all-flash architecture, flash-based caching and data persistence on SSD devices to provide exceptionally high performance with consistent, low latency. Stretched Cluster: Enable enterprise-level availability that ensures no data loss and near zero downtime even in the event of an entire site failure. Virtual SAN Solutions Back Next VMware Technology How To Get It Get Support Community ShareThis Copy and Paste.

Advantages of network virtualization impress, but hurdles remain. Server virtualization transformed IT operations, and now data centers are facing another transformative technology as more of the network is virtualized. With the introduction of network functions virtualization, a single physical host can house a multi-tier application without traffic ever traversing a physical network. Network functions virtualization (NFV) enables the virtualization of a network device or function, and in turn allows the user to profit from the many advantages of network virtualization. The foundation of NFV is the virtual switch, which is as old as server virtualization, and, in its most basic form, provides Layer 2 connectivity between VMs on a single host.

Over the years, virtualization vendors have added capabilities to virtual switches. From a logical perspective, virtual switches provide much of the same functionality as the traditional top-of-rack switches. The introduction of NFV takes network virtualization to another level. Zero-trust security use case. Physical and virtual networking | VMware ESXi. The key virtual networking components in virtual architecture are virtual Ethernet adapters and virtual switches.

A virtual machine can be configured with one or more virtual Ethernet adapters. A virtual switch enables virtual machines on the same ESXi host to communicate with each other using the same protocols used over physical switches, without the need for additional hardware. VMware technology lets you link local virtual machines to each other and to the external network through a virtual switch. A virtual switch, just like any physical Ethernet switch, forwards frames at the data link layer. An ESXi host can contain multiple virtual switches. Virtual switches are similar to modern physical Ethernet switches in many ways. Virtual switches also support VLAN segmentation at the port level, so that each port can be configured as an access or trunk port, providing access to either single or multiple VLANs. vSphere Virtual Networking. Distributed switches explained | VMware ESXi. A distributed switch functions as a single virtual switch accross all associated ESXi hosts and allows virtual machines to maintain consistent network configuration as they migrate across multiple hosts.

Just like standard switches, distributed switches forward frames at layer 2, support VLANs, NIC teaming, outbound traffic shaping, etc. The biggest difference between these two types of virtual switches is that distributed switches are configured using a central unified management interface through vCenter Server, which greatly simplifies virtual machine network configuration and reduces complexity in clustered ESXi environments. Distributed switches also support some advanced networking features that standard switches don’t, such as network I/O Control, port mirroring, network health check, and support for protocols such as NetFlow, Private VLAN (PVLAN), Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP), etc. Vmw nsx network virtualization design guide. The Network Virtualization Blog. The VMware NSX network virtualization platform allows us to build sophisticated networking and security constructs in software.

NSX has a rich RESTful API which allows one to build highly flexible and automated environments. In this blog, we’re going to focus on operations and automation; we’ll demonstrate one example of automation around security policies/rules that can be done with NSX. VMware NSX allows for micro-segmentation with a distributed firewall service (DFW). The DFW is a kernel-level module and allows for enhanced segmentation and security across a virtualized environment. One of the common questions we get asked is, “how do I decide what rules to build?” NSX allows for multiple options to create rules such as the use of NSX flow-monitoring or analyzing traffic patterns via logging to create the rules.

We’ll demonstrate how the VMware NSX DFW can be monitored with the popular Splunk platform. What will be our security challenge in the coming decade? Network Virtualization vs. Server Virtualization | VMware Radius. How is network virtualization similar to server virtualization? Well, for one thing they’re very similar conceptually. On a virtualized server, a software abstraction layer (server hypervisor) reproduces the familiar attributes of the physical server in software, allowing the attributes to be programmatically assembled in any arbitrary combination to produce a unique virtual machine (VM) in a matter of seconds. With network virtualization, the functional equivalent of a network hypervisor reproduces networking services—like switching, routing, access control, firewalling, quality of service (QoS), and load balancing—in software, allowing them to produce a unique virtual network in a matter of seconds.

When you think about it, what’s going on in networking today is the same thing that has been going on in compute and storage for years. Virtual Networking 101: Understanding VMware Networking. May 30, 2012By Petra Jorgenson On a basic, structural level, virtual networks in VMware aren’t that different from physical networks; vSphere is designed to mimic the functions of a physical network, so a lot of the network hardware you’ll find in the real world, you’ll find virtualized in VMware. If you understand how physical networks operate, then understanding virtual networking shouldn’t be too difficult. Before jumping into an explanation of how VMware handles virtual networking, I’ll first provide a quick refresher of the basic equipment that makes up a physical network. If you already have a firm understanding of how networking works, then you can skip the following paragraph. To connect to a network, a computer must be network-capable, meaning that it must have a working network interface controller (NIC), also known as a network card or network adapter, installed.

In VMware, switches are used to establish a connection between the virtual network and the physical network. Virtual networking concepts. What is VMware NSX? - Definition from WhatIs.com. VMware NSX is a virtual networking and security software product family created from VMware's vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) and Nicira Network Virtualization Platform (NVP) intellectual property. By submitting your email address, you agree to receive emails regarding relevant topic offers from TechTarget and its partners. You can withdraw your consent at any time. Contact TechTarget at 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA. You also agree that your personal information may be transferred and processed in the United States, and that you have read and agree to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy. NSX software-defined networking is part of VMware's software-defined data center concept, which offers cloud computing on VMware virtualization technologies.

VMware's stated goal with NSX is to provision virtual networking environments without command line interfaces or other direct administrator intervention. The Virtues of Network Virtualization. Security. IT automation. Application continuity. What do these three things have in common? Two words: network virtualization. The data center continues to transform through server and storage virtualization, hyper-converged infrastructure, and cloud technologies. Today, network virtualization is the next big step. Network virtualization is similar in concept to server virtualization. The benefits of network virtualization are comparable to those of server virtualization.

What About Software-Defined Networking? Network virtualization is not the same thing as software-defined networking (SDN). Martin Casado, senior vice president and general manager of networking and security at VMware, thinks of SDN as a mechanism and networking virtualization as a solution. Network virtualization, on the other hand, is basically a solution or product that organizations can use to change their networking paradigm. Part of a Complete SDDC Strategy The Network Virtualization Triple Play Security. 1. VMware NSX: 3 different use cases.

Network virtualization continues to play a key role on the journey to the data center of the future. As concepts such as the software-defined data center (SDDC) and hyperconvergence take hold, they are driven, in part, by network virtualization technology. While there is a growing throng of network virtualization providers, VMware's NSX continually stands out as one of the most popular options. At the 2015 VMworld conference, the company announced that it had more than 700 NSX customers, with a few of them spending more than $1 million a piece on the product. SEE: Decoding VMware's mysterious containerization strategy So, why are these companies turning to NSX? Armor Armor provides a multi-tenant, secure virtual private cloud, hosting more than 1,200 customers in its enterprise division. Jeff Schilling, the chief of operations and security at Armor, said they ended up adopting NSX to give a more integrated solution. "We have over 1,200 customers with tens of thousands of VMs.

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