What are the top 3 benefits of VMWare? I would say their micro segmentation, visibility/analytics and SD-WAN capabilities.
If you want to deploy micro segmentation in the Data centre I think NSX-T offers a simple to manage solution with good analytics and integration into your hypervisor, Kubernetes and cloud workloads.
Then there’s VeloCloud, which may be the best pure SD-WAN vendor out there and has been consistently named as a leader by Gartner. However, the traditional SD-WAN vendors don’t have a lot of security built into their products, so VeloCloud has relied on integrating with 3rd Party SASE products like Zscalar and Prisma Access. I think we’ll see this change soon, as their market position is coming under a lot of pressure from security vendors stepping into the SD-WAN space.
Are there any new challenges surfacing during Covid19? Due to covid, companies are looking at SASE to support secure remote working. In parallel, secure local Internet breakout at branch offices has been a growing trend, even before Covid, due to the growing popularity of Office 365 and other SaaS services. Companies want to remove all but essential infrastructure (printers, building access, CCTV) from their offices, and instead use hot desks and soft phones. To support both use cases, SASE and SD-WAN work well together.
What were your key takeaways from VMWorld 2020? VMWare have been very good with their acquisitions, particularly with AVI Networks, Nyansa and Carbon Black, and they’re clearly still making acquisitions in the security space, having just announced the acquisition of Lastline.
Any tips for someone getting into VMWare? There are lots of great resources if you’re interested in VMWare products. There are the VMWare Hands-on Labs, VMWare learning zone and 60 day evaluation licenses for home labs. You may also consider joining the VMware User Group where you can get 365 day evaluation licenses for a fee.
Any tips for hiring a VMWare engineer? VMware products are reasonably easy to learn on the engineering side, but with the architecture and design you have to be careful. NSX-T fits a wider range of use cases and is easier to use than SDN products from traditional networking vendors. So knowing what technologies your business should invest in is important. For example, large Financials may choose to automate the overlay with NSX-T and underlay with ACI, giving the best of both worlds. So from an architectural and design perspective, it’s good to have experience with lots of different deployments.
Once it’s in, NSX-T and VeloCloud are easy to use. I’ve had a sneak peak at the VeloCloud GUI update which Nyansa has been working on. The Analytics look really good and has a similar look and feel to other VMware products such as NSX-T. When that launches it’ll be great.
Any future predictions for VMWare in the next 5 years? SD-WAN is a rapidly evolving market, and I expect we’ll see VeloCloud ramping up their security capabilities in their gateway with a SASE-like offering. I would also expect VMware to improve the security on the VeloCloud Edge devices.
James is a Network, Cloud and DevOps consultant who is CCIE Certified (#27896), CCDE Certified (#20120018), VMware VCP6-NV and Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional. James has over 20 years’ experience in Financial Services, Enterprise, Service Provider and Cloud environments.
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VMWare learning assets:
https://labs.hol.vmware.com/
https://vmwarelearningzone.vmware.com/
https://www.vmware.com/uk/try-vmware.html
https://www.vmug.com/membership/membership-benefits
