Virtual Stack

On the 14th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Christoph Buschbeck from VMware and we talk about AppDefense, VMware's data centre endpoint security solution that embeds threat detection and response into the virtualisation layer. We look into the Enterprise IT Security landscape of today, what's working well, what can be improved, and why we should be "ensuring good" vs. "chasing bad".

You can reach out to Christoph via LinkedIn and Twitter (@cbuschbeck).

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@egirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Show Notes:

• 01:30 - Intro
• 03:30 - AppDefense in a nutshell
• 06:00 - "Goldilocks" zone and what's not working well on the current Enterprise IT security approach
• 15:00 - AppDefense architecture
• 29:45 - What's the "manifest file", how does AppDefense capture the intended state of an app?
• 45:10 - Future of AppDefense, Integration with NSX, Adaptive Micro-segmentation
• 50:00 - Licensing model and how to test AppDefense
• 55:00 - Closing notes

Links:

• Transforming Security in a Cloud and Mobile World (VMworld US 2018 session with a live demo)
• Security, Virtualization, & The Goldilocks Zone - Martin Casado
• vSphere Platinum Solution Overview
• vSphere Platinum Promotion – free VMware Cloud on AWS credits

On the 13th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, Dimitar (Mitko) Vasilev joined me to talk about his journey from a Network Engineer to a Startup CEO. On this slightly longer episode, Mitko explains his journey starting from university, Cisco, his first startup - OA Digital, and his current endeavour - Data Mining Platform. We talked about several personal, inter-personal and technical aspects of building your own startup, which I believe you'll find interesting as much as I did. You can reach out to Mitko on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitkovasilev/), Twitter (@iotcoi) and [email protected]. Mitko will soon start his own podcast called "Day 0" so keep an eye on that as well. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show notes: Intro:

• 02:10 - University, first jobs and Cisco.
• 09:50 - Cisco openBerlin
• 19:30 - Story of OA Digital
• 25:20 - Story of Data Mining Platform

The Journey:

• 29:15 - The motivation at the beginning of the startup journey.
• 33:15 - The process between having an idea and validating that there's a business lying behind it.
• 35:50 - How does it feel to go into a different domain - from IT/Networking/IoT into real estate and smart buildings?
• 39:05 - You have a good idea but you're not the "maker" (e.g software engineer, electronic/mechanical engineer). How do you find the right people and form a team?
• 41:50 - How would you work on your start up without interfering with your day-to-day job?
• 43:50 - Knowing the right time to jump off the corporate train, leaving the good salary and perks. Financial planning.
• 47:10 - Dealing with stress and emotions, communication with family and friends.
• 49:10 - How does an engineer teach himself/herself to be a CEO? E.g. leadership, finance, marketing, business acumen.
• 53:50 - Knowing the right time "to pull the plug" and close down your startup.
• 57:00 - What would you do differently if you started the journey again?

Future:

• 01:00:30 - What's the next big thing that will evolve the technology in the near future
• 01:04:10 - What would you study if you were 18 again?
• 01:06:50 - Closing notes

Books:

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
• Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results
• How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

Happy new year! On the 12th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, Martijn (@smitmartijn) and I will be talking about vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) version 4.0. vRNI 4.0 has been released on December 20th and it's full of cool new features and enhancements.

This is not a vRNI 101 episode, but in a nutshell, vRNI is VMware's security and network visibility tool that helps customers plan application security and migration, optimise and troubleshoot virtual and physical networks, and manage & scale NSX environments.

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Show notes:

• 05:30 - Why do you need vRNI? Main use cases?
• 11:40 - New features on vRNI 4.0.
• 15:15 - VMware Cloud on AWS support.
• 22:40 - Support for Cisco ACI, ASA, F5 Big-IP, sFlow and more.
• 29:35 - NSX-T support enhancements.
• 34:51 - Configuring static/dynamic baselines and thresholds.
• 38:30 - Scalability, performance and usability enhancements.
• 43:25 - Upgrade path to vRNI 4.0.
• 46:40 - PowervRNI and the automation of vRNI.
• 52:01 - Closing notes, contact info.

Links:

• Guest: Martijn Smit (@smitmartijn)
• vRNI 4.0 Official VMware Blog Post
• vRealize Network Insight 4.0 Release Notes
• vRealize Network Insight 4.0 User Guide
• PowervRNI on GitHub
• Martijn's Personal Blog: http://lostdomain.org/, with lots of articles on NSX, vRNI and more.

If you're working in networking, or Enterprise IT in general, chances are that you are pursuing or have pursued at least one technical certification track. Almost every leading vendor has certifications tracks, so does VMware.

Today on the 11th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, we will discuss about the top-tier certification of VMware: VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX). I'll be joined by two experts who has already passed this certification: Marco van Baggum (VCDX-DCV #223), SDDC Architect at ITQ and Johan van Amersfoort (VCDX-DTM #238), EUC Architect at ITQ. We discuss about both technical and non-technical aspects of this touch certification.

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Show notes:

• Guests:
  • Marco van Baggum (@vMBaggum,vMBaggum.nl)
  • Johan van Amersfoort (@vhojan, vHojan.nl)
• Offical VCDX Directory
• VCDX Certification Page
• VCDX Discussion Forums on VMware Technology Network
• Books:
  • VDI Design Guide: A comprehensive guide to help you design VMware Horizon, based on modern standards, by Johan van Amersfoort (ISBN:9781977535528)
  • IT Architect: Foundation in the Art of Infrastructure Design: A Practical Guide for IT Architects (ISBN:9780996647700)
  • IT Architect Series: The Journey: A Guidebook for Anyone Interested in IT Architecture (ISBN: 9781483473642)
• VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) Survey

On the 10th episode of Virtual Stack, Stijn Depril (@sdepril - vSAN Specialist SE Benelux at VMware) and I talk about vSAN, VMware's Software Defined Storage (or as some will call, hyper-converged) solution.

Stijn is active on social media, and don't forget to check his blog at vmuskeeters.com and YouTube channel.

Some important links that we mentioned on the show:

• VMware Compatibility Guide
• vSAN ReadyNodes Configurator
• VMware Cloud on AWS roadmap on storage technologies

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

In today's Enterprise IT world, most of the organisations use services of at least one public cloud provider. This brings many advantages like agility, but it creates new challenges such as loss of visibility across clouds and inconsistent network and security policies. NSX Cloud is the tool that can help you to achieve operational consistency in a multi-cloud world.

On this episode, I'm joined by Dumlu Timuralp (https://twitter.com/dumlutimuralp) and we discuss about NSX Cloud. Here are some links that can give you further info on this subject:

NSX Cloud product page: https://www.vmware.com/products/nsx-cloud.html

Lightboard session on NSX Cloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAZ3stc_kHw

Introduction to NSX Cloud Breakout session from VMworld US 2018: https://videos.vmworld.com/global/2018/videoplayer/22575.

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

VMworld Europe 2018 was a blast. On this brief episode, I talk about the highlights of the event from my perspective. Here are the links to some of the stuff I talk about on the show:

VMware Blog - Event Recap: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmworld/2018/11/vmworld-2018-europe-recap.html

Day 1: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmworld/2018/11/vmworld-2018-europe-day-1-recap.html

Day 2: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmworld/2018/11/vmworld-2018-europe-day-2-recap.html

Heptio blog post about the acquisition: https://blog.heptio.com/heptio-will-be-joining-forces-with-vmware-on-a-shared-cloud-native-mission-b01225b1bc9e.

Kubernetes Steering Commitee: https://github.com/kubernetes/steering

VMworld On-demand Video Library: https://videos.vmworld.com/global/2018

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

On this show, Gilles Chekroun and I talk about VMware Cloud on AWS. Gilles is a Lead SE for VMC on AWS in VMware and he has tons knowledge and experience on cloud and networking in general.

But on this short episode, we dip our feet in the use cases for hybrid cloud and why VMC on AWS can be a good solution the enterprises. Follow the show because we will definitely revisit this topic and see what's under the hood of VMC on AWS.

Don't forget to check Gilles' personal blog at gilles.cloud. There you can find his great demo where he's using Alexa to fully automate an SDDC deployment on VMC on AWS!

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Martijn (@smitmartijn, and soon: @vnetworkguy) is my first repeat host, and on this episode we talk about the VMware vExpert program.

VMware vExpert is an honorary title that VMware grants to individuals for advocating the VMware's products and solutions. With Martijn, we discuss the program in detail, what the benefits are, what you need to do to be granted with the vExpert title, and more.

Read more on: https://vexpert.vmware.com/.

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Security is a hot topic in Enterprise IT and it will always stay like that. There are several new methods and approaches to optimise security and micro-segmentation is one of those. On this episode, I'm joined by Robert Kloosterhuis (@thefluffysysop, http://thefluffyadmin.net/) and we enter the world of micro-segmentation. We talk about distributed firewall capabilities of NSX, best practices and tools.

Here are some great content if you'd like to dig deeper in this subject.

Security with NSX Data Center

VMware NSX Micro-segmentation Day 1

VMware NSX Micro-segmentation Day 2

Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.