OSPF Area Conversion

vSphere NSX supports OSPF as well as BGP and Static routing. When configuring OSPF, you will need to specify the OSPF area number in decimal format. When working with OSPF routing configurations that use dotted decimal format, the following formula will convert dotted decimal to decimal. Likely your favorite subnet calculator also supports OSPF area number conversions! The formula you can paste into a cell is: =(((C5*256)+D5)*256+E5)*256+F5

Crawl, Walk, Run…

My friend and colleague Michael Bailey has had the wonderful opportunity to work for VMware for more than 8 years. Michael witnessed first hand the rapid evolution of the vSphere Hypervisor and the spread of virtualization across enterprise data centers. Michael was there to see the amazement of customers when features like vMotion were first demonstrated.

When speaking about compute virtualization, Michael would often say that it is a process of “Crawl, Walk, Run”… There is no need or requirement to virtualize everything – start with small environments such as file and print, and expand your organizational experience from a small foundation. Crawl, Walk, Run provides infrastructure teams time to focus on reviewing the people and process aspects of infrastructure delivery associated with the changes in infrastructure technology.

Download NSX Documentation

NSX Documentation is available for download at https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ under the Networking & Security Tab. Happy bedtime reading!

Firefox REST Client

Lots of fun using a browser REST client to develop and test network object manipulation, or any other virtual infrastructure function that can be consumed via REST API. Firefox as a really nice REST Client that works well for API testing. If you want to start developing scripts using REST calls, this is a must have browser extension… https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/restclient/

I Can’t Download NSX?

VMware administrators for years have had access to download VMware technologies for evaluation. NSX is a little different and you will not find NSX on the download page. The reason for this is simple – The VMware Networking and Security Business Unit (NSBU) wants you to have a positive experience evaluating NSX technologies. As such, when you are ready to perform an evaluation, NSX systems engineers will assist you with access to the software and review the installation process with you. Actual installation is pretty straight forward so when you are ready, reach out to your favorite technology partner or core VMware sales team and they will put you in touch with the VMware NSBU. You can also use the link on the VMware website… http://www.vmware.com/company/contact_sales.html