Category Archives: vExpert NSX

VMworld 2018 Tips and Tricks

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Bringing back a previous post and adding to it.  There are a few things to cover: (A/C and room cooling, hydration, walking, scheduling, community, packing and swag).

A/C and room cooling

First and foremost close the drapes on your room.  Remember you are in the middle of the dessert and in the hottest days of summer.  Block the sun from coming in while you are out of your room!!  It just makes sense. Secondly I am copying from a previous post I did last year on helping to really set your room’s thermostat.  Follow the instructions below:

Setting the room thermostat to VIP mode which allows you better control on your room A/C system.

  1. Hold down thee Display button. Keep it held down till the end of the proceedure.
  2. Press the Off button and release it.
  3. Press the Up button and release it.
  4. Now release the Display button.

This should put your thermostat into VIP mode and allow you to get your room temp down to a cooler temp if you like it that way. When I am in Vegas especially during the summer for shows like VMworld I can never get enough cool air around me. So far this seems to work.

Hydration

Again remember you are in the dessert in the middle of summer.  Even if the conference feels cool due to the extensive A/C systems running full blast your body will lose water!  Drink plenty of fluids.  This means not just alcohol based fluids but fluids that will replenish your body’s need for H20.  Think about bringing powdered Gatorade or other sportsdrinks and mixing them up onsite with the available water bottles.  While it is tempting to drink in the evening parties don’t forget to drink at least an equal amount of water to help your body detoxify over night.  You can easily end up with a headache and it may or may not be alcohol related.  Remember if you can’t concentrate or have a headache drink water.

Walking

I know of people at VMworld who easily hit 40K+ steps per day.  Wear comfortable shoes.  Do not bring brand new shoes!  Have a change of shoes and have plenty of changes of socks.  It may not be a bad idea to pack some band-aids or other bandages in case of the dreaded blisters on your feet!  I also know that some who shall remain nameless even go so far as to wear their compression socks to keep the swelling down to a minimum while on the expo floor.

Scheduling 

It is easy to fill your entire VMworld Schedule Builder up.  There is absolutely no way to do everything.  Many of the sessions are recorded for playback later.  Make room for time to walk the expo floor.  Make time to have conversations at breakfast and lunch.  These conversations lead to those hidden gems of a conference.  Things you won’t learn anywhere else but at a table you shared with a product manager or a developer of a new product.  Make some time for yourself too.  Maybe a 10-15 minute power nap in a beanbag chair in the VMTN Community area?  Sometimes that is exactly what you will need to keep going.  Don’t be afraid to drop sessions and add new sessions as the event goes on.  If something looks interesting and the Schedule Builder shows it is full and waitlisted go hang out at that  Session/Breakout and see if they end up with room for you once it starts. Make some time to visit the HOL.  If you don’t know what the HOL is ask!!!  It delivers more VMs in a day than many of us will in our lifetime.

Community

Stop and talk.  Offer to help find a location!  We are all 25K+ of the best community anywhere!  Ask a #vExpert in the VMTN area about their blog or what they are tweeting about.  Ask someone what their favorite session is?  There is a new 2018 #vTrailmap that will be out.  There are folks with stickers and cards.   Come see me I may still have some around once things get going. I mentioned sit at random tables during breakfast and lunch and meet new people. Follow @VMworld and @VMTNCommunity and @VMwareCode on twitter.  Ask!  Don’t be afraid some of the best support sessions happen through rapidly evolving crowdsourced twitter responses.

Packing and swag

I pack enough shirts to be able to change out for the evening events.  I get tired of wearing the same stuff all day for 18 hours a day.  I pack extra socks and shoes too.  I try to limit the amount of stuff I pack around in my backpack all day too.  And I generally bring an old ratty backpack and toss it while there.  This is due to the fact that generally the VMworld backpack is pretty decent quality.  I limit the amount of literature I bring home from vendors by taking pictures of the marketing slicks and then tossing them.  I do pack a collapsible bag in my outbound luggage for swag items.  I end up giving away a bunch to coworkers/customers when I come home but the number of t-shirts and other items seems to grow and I have been known to ship a bag home instead of checking it at the airport.

One last note I heard today from @WonderNerd Tony Foster is that to leave your backpack in your room for the General Session on Tuesday due to security screening concerns for the main speaker Malala Yousafzai.  This will speed up the entry into the main conference area.

Hope this helps someone!  See all y’all there!

VMworld VMTN Session – VMware Center for Advanced Learning – Advanced Architecture Course

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I will be a Panelist with Daemon Behr (@DaemonBehr) discussion the very unique program of education regarding the VMware Center for Advanced Learning.  Specifically we will be talking about the new offering of the Advanced Architecture Course.  This is usually shortened to the VMware #CALAAC.  If you are attending @VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas next week 8/26/2018-8/30/2018 and have some time on Wednesday morning come visit us at the VMTN Communities area.  In the VMworld schedule builder it can be found by searching VMTN7703U.  Here is a shortened URL for the search. VMworld Schedule Builder Search for VMTN7703U

See all y’all there!

vExpert NSX – 2018

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Honored to be included among the very smart crew of folks who champion the need for SDN on the VMware NSX-v and NSX-t platforms!  Such a great team of people and always great to work with the NBSU at VMware (@VMWareNSX).

                  

I love having NSX discussions with folks.  If you want to connect hit me up here on LinkedIn or on twitter @VirtSecurity.

At @ConnectionIT I am able to work with another fine VMware vExpert @MBLeib who also happens to be a VMware vExpert NSX member also.  If you haven’t gotten the understanding about what NSX and SDN can do for you ask your @ConnectionIT Account Manager to reach out to one of us.

I get excited to imagine what will be released next week while at @VMworld in Las Vegas.  I hope there will be further information on how NSX/SDN will be used in systems like #IoT and even down to endpoints with products like AirWatch.  Eventually we all will have to move off rule based firewall systems and onto policy based engines that will work throughout our corporate infrastructure no matter where we are connecting from.  Sometimes we just get focused on just the Data Center or even the edge of the Data Center and the DMZ where the largest amount of attacks happen but we need to look holistically into where all the traffic moves and most of this is East/West bound in between our VMs inside the rack servers/blade servers/HCI/converged infrastructure.  If we don’t how will we react not just when or if a breach happens or even more likely a badly configured application/buggy app is let loose.

Let’s keep the discussion going!

Here is a list of the other VMware vExperts for NSX.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vexpert/2018/08/17/vexpert-nsx-2018-award-announcement/

 

Quick pro tip for large hotel A/C systems. #vExpert

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So I read somewhere that many hotels don’t actually let you set the temp above or below certain thresholds. Unless… you are a VIP. I googles for a while a found that most systems will allow you to reset your hotel room wall digital thermostat into VIP mode with the following steps:

 

  1. Hold down thee Display button. Keep it held down till the end of the proceedure.
  2. Press the Off button and release it.
  3. Press the Up button and release it.
  4. Now release the Display button.
This should put your thermostat into VIP mode and allow you to get your room temp down to a cooler temp if you like it that way. When I am in Vegas especially during the summer for shows like VMworld I can never get enough cool air around me. So far this seems to work.
 
If you find something other than these steps please let me know and I can add this to the blog page.
 

VMworld Day 1 – kickoff

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So today was the day of big announcements.  Some things people already knew about and had been waiting for General Availability (GA) and some things that might have been a shock or surprise to some.

  1. VMConAWS – yes that means that organizations will be able to consume AWS services/API stacks running on VMware vSphere. Sewn together with NSX and some other magic sauce. I will have to dig into this further to see how this is provisioned, consumed, managed and what caveats there are. What will be the pros and cons with this. 
  2. VMware announced the release of AppDefense a new model to protect your apps running on virtualized and cloud environments. This will leverage virtualized infrastructure to monitor running applications and report deviations and correlations from known good states.  This was previewed last year at VMworld 2016 as Project Goldilocks. 
  3. Products also getting a new version were vRealize Network Insights, VMware Integrated Openstack, a new vSAN offering and a new product called: vSphere Scale-Out which will enhance BigData and HPC environments.
I will be digging into these new items further down the line.  
 
For me today was a pretty big day in that I took and passed my VCP-NV exam for VMware NSX.  This was a big step in getting back to the basics.  I hadn’t taken a vendor Professional level exam in almost 2 years. In fact the last exam I took was my VCAP-DCA5 exam at VMworld 2015.  I have already started on plans for the VCIX-NV. 
 
This evening I was able to have some time to celebrate and see some vendors at various parties.   Thanks to BigSwitchNetworks, Zerto, and Nutanix for their parties that I was able to attend and also a thanks to Tintri for the invitation but also apologies in that I wasn’t able to make it to your event.  See everyone online tomorrow with more breaking VMworld 2017 news.
 

Pre-VMworld Day 2 – PEX Breakouts

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Partner Exchange is all about enabling the VMware Partner ecosystem.  Since some of the things during this period are under embargo until released tomorrow (8/28/2017) My focus has been EUC and NSX and thus this will be my schedule today:

  • NSX Assessment-led Selling
  • NSX Advanced Security
  • Business Growth Keynote – Embracing Digital Transformation
  • Business Growth Keynote – The Future of Cyber Security

Depending on the content in each of these sessions I may opt out and head over to the Hands On Labs (HOL) here at VMworld.  During my lab time I am focused on NSX.

Pre-VMworld Day 1 – PEX Bootcamps – NSX LiveFire Bootcamp – notes

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Deep dive on VMware NSX and implementation best practices.

Security considerations – Cluster design – Distributed Firewall rules

Important to remember to create an exclusion for your vCenter and External Platform controller from the Distributed Firewall rulesets being deployed if you have default rules or you may “accidentally” disable access to your vCenter and it’s communication to/from the NSX Mgmt platform.

Policy Policy Policy – This simplifies your network security.

Leverage vCenter objects and especially Security Groups to abstract workloads. This will allow for more dynamic policies and are setup as static memberships or dynamic memberships. Of course by definiton dynamic groups are much more flexible.

Security tags are stored in the NSX Mgr database separately from vCenter tags. These are defined as part of service composer blueprints.

This LiveFire training focused on NSX-v and not NSX-t.

Please excuse any typos as I was typing this on my iPad.

@Spousetivities #VMworld – Why it’s important

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Ok so let me get this started.  I like conferences.  I am an extrovert and love talking to people.  But… I don’t like being gone for long periods of time without my wife.  So back in 2010 I think I heard about @Spousetivities and how there were sponsored events and activities for my wife to go do while I am “networking” at VMworld.  This was an awesome thing.  We have been in both San Francisco and Las Vegas for VMworld and there are times and places that may not always be the safest.

While she can take care of herself I do worry about other people and worry about her finding things to do that she will like.  Crystal Lowe definitely came up with a solution to a problem that no one realized was there.  In the true meaning of Entrepreneur she found a need and went about filling it.  I am glad that Jill can hang out with all the @Spousetivities bunch each year and get to do some amazing activities.  If you haven’t brought your spouse or significant other along to a conference because they feel like it will be boring to be inside at a hotel or resort all day then go take a look at Spousetivities.com.  There also amazing sponsors who can get your other half into parties with you in the evenings.

I really liked the shirt that Jill came back with a couple of years ago.  She was definitely the #vCutie!!

I would like to thank the following sponsors and people involved for @Spousetivities #vmworld 2017:

@rhipecloud Rhipe Cloud

@TVPStrategy vPractice – TVPStrategy

@veeam https://www.veeam.com/

@myVMUG https://www.vmug.com/ Join this for the VMUG Advantage and get access to licenses for your VMware Home Lab.

@VMWareNSX VMWare Network Virtualization Blog

@datrium https://www.datrium.com/

@actualtechmedia http://www.actualtechmedia.com/

 

Getting ready for VMworld and Partner Exchange 2017

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Working to clean up my blog and update things to help me live blog/tweet during VMworld 2017.  Looking forward to a bunch of announcements and seeing tons of tweeps/vExperts/VCDX folks and others.  It’s always great to catch up and talk shop with other aficionados.

Personally I am trying to pack lighter this year and be more selective in the Expo Hall floor swag that I get.  There is so much I often end up with that gets pitched when I get home.  How do you feel about the things you get at booths and at parties?  One of the things I really want at parties is some real food.  Something that is not a finger food that leaves me still hungry and does not have enough capacity to absorb alcohol.