NSX L2VPN within the Data Center

NSX Edge Services Gateways (ESGs) are deployed to perform various network functions (Network Function Virtualization) in an NSX environment.

ESG’s deployed configured for L2VPN provide Layer 2 network adjacency between data centers allowing VLANs – VLANs, VLANs – VXLANs, and VXLANs – VXLANs to be bridged across a Metro Area or Wide Area Network.

The primary use case for L2VPN Edge Services Gateways is Private Cloud to Private Cloud and Private Cloud to Public Cloud Layer 2 LAN/VXLAN extension, but they are also a useful tool for VM mobility within a data center…

The Phoenix Virtual Application…

Traditionally, applications based on physical and/or virtual machines have a lifecycle that can be measured in months to years. Today, a Software Defined Data Center virtual application and its network security constructs can easily be defined in a Blueprint for consumption as needed, but longevity of these applications worse case can still be considerable.

The Phoenix Virtual Application describes an application that has a lifecycle measured from minutes to a few weeks at most, then reclaimed (deleted) and redeployed over and over again…

NSX and Virtual Machine Sprawl

During a recent customer discussion on NSX, I was asked about Virtual Machine sprawl in an NSX environment. This was a great question and cuts to the heart of Network Virtualization and how network functions are implemented in a virtualized environment…

Stateful Firewall and NSX

One question that I get asked often is how NSX firewall state is maintained if you have a hypervisor based distributed firewall? The big difference in a distributed firewall vs a perimeter based firewall is that firewall execution has been moved from the perimeter of the network to the vNIC of the Virtual Machine…

Transparent Page Sharing Changes…

Just a heads up to say there are some changes in future vSphere releases to Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) to improve VM to VM security…