vNerdyNate #vExpert

Tuesday @VMworld

San Fransisco!

I decided to write a bit about the town, I came from a 105 degree Texas over to the west coast. Considering the only “West Coast” thing I knew was a swing dancing step known as the West Coast 3-step(I met my wife Swing Dancing).

ITS COLD. Yeah ok so lows in the 50s is not something I was prepared for, but man the thin hoodie I brought is just not up to snuff for this kind of weather. The highs are really nice, walking .5 miles just to Mascone and an ungodly amount afterwards is really nice here.

THE FOG! OK, so if you’ve seen as many horror films as me you know that the fog is not  a good thing. That’s when the monsters come and when we all subsequently die. I’ve never seen fog like this, the thickness, the smell, its something different.

THE HOMELESS. Ok, coming from Texas almost everyone had a snide comment for me, “Don’t step in the poop!”, “Check the poop map daily!”, and basically a lot of snickering about poop and the homeless people. For one, the homeless people are subsequent to our human nature. Not everyone goes to VMworld and not everyone can do what we do daily, but ANYONE can be homeless. To me the statement, “Homeless are just people without homes” is a real statement. I used to preach to homeless shelters aeons ago, and that feeling of men/women needing shelter, food, and to be treated like actual people is still instilled in me.

Also to everyone that asked, I haven’t seen one poop on the sidewalk OK. GET OVER IT.

The real VMworld

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a time to state what the best thing about VMworld is. Its the people around you. If you’re at VMworld alone, talk. Find a table with one seat open, and sit in that chair, and talk to them. I’m pretty sure we’re all people, and we all want to help, grow, and befriend new people starting a journey or maybe finding people who are already well past our journey. This is one of the greatest communitites out there and one of my favorites!

General Session with Steve Young and Lindsay Vonn and Ray O’Farrell

  • Started with a video about the future. Very Walt Disney Epcot “City of the Future” Stuff or Spaceship Earth
  • Digital Transformation and Digital infrastructure
  • Tanzu Tees being used as a question for the three keys, Build, Run, Manage for the apps.
  • DellEMC VMware Cloud Partnership and Project. (Previously Project Dimension)
    • Showing project PACIFIC Holy cow! They are writing the private cloud to be Dev-Centric allowing developers to deploy and utilize the software for quick build/run
    • vSphere itself is branded to join Kubernetes itself. Amazing.
    • Tanzu Mission control, Showing clusters in the multi-cloud. The hype is real
    • Basically setting a binding in Tanzu Mission control it can run the fleet cluster in the multi-cloud
    • Unified controller for a unified management platform. IF everything is running on vmware
  • Moving to Connect and protect(Marcos Hernandez)
    • Looking at Tanzu Mission Control Running in NSX Service Mesh
    • NSX-T within Tanzu Mission Control works much like Network Insight and utilized the full force of VMware apps, to show the mapping, the flow, and then uses data analytics to create a list of needed rules.
    • SIMULATION MODE(Totes cool bruh)
    • Now only protected flows work on the wire… BOOM
    • Now utilizing App Defense, and Carbon Black to fix vulnerabilities. VMware has taken no time to integrate their new partners into their productsgP1eUBwHQaChClLuKVS22g
  • Wavefront
    • Utilizing Wavefront to  manage the issues within your multi-cloud environment.
    • Traces showing Distrib Tracing.
    • Now from Wavefront you can connect directly to the component thats having issues
    • Project Magna to fix VSAN issues.
    • Now after we have secured, and fixed our environment, we utilize Cloud Health in the background, and yet again get to it in Tanzu Mission Control.
    • Cloud Health is now used to reclaim unused VM’s and alert when approaching or over budget.
  • Zuora – a Customer story
  • Now we’re moving to the Experience
      • Horizon Desktop as a service (DAAS??)
      • This allows deployment to many different locations, applications, etc. Basically full setup for the employee that just joined, as a virtual machine.
      • Workspace ONE – Employee experience dashboard showing issues, and sets rules via automation to create the ticket run the automation.
      • Workspace
  • Emerging Tech
    • HCX enterprise will allow migrations from one VMC to another accross the nation, The change rate is obviously key here in how it runs but it will be amazing.
    • ESXi on ARM
  • SanJay Poonen, Steve Young, and Lindsay Vonn
    • the sick burns from Lindsay Vonn are worth every penny of the VMworld ticket. AWESOME

Peanut Butter and Jelly: Why Virtual Machines and Containers Go Together [KUB1133BU]

Kenny Coleman @kendrickcoleman and Tristan Todd @tristantodd

VMworld Video

  • Myths about Containers and VM’s co-habitating
    • 5 reasons you should run containers on bare metal, not vms(Diamanti)
    • Myth: Each vm consumes storage plus cpu for a full virtual machine before you spin up a containerized workflow, so the vm ties up resources whether its using it or not
      • A good argument, but you dont need to have specialized hardware to run a specific task.
      • Hardware capability – abstracted vs hard requirement. VMware has done a great job of abstracting the layer so that the hardware abstraction doesn’t run resources when needed.
  • Myth:  Individual containers are stateless and ephemeral. Rather than moving a running container from one host to another as you would with a VM, you just start a new instance on another host
    • Higher availability doesn’t mean that it works against the Kubernetes orchestrator. Kubernetes doesn’t take into account the resources issues or problems like DRS in vSphere.
    • vSphere with Kubernetes provides dual layer scheduling for maximum resource utilization with DRS
    • Bare Metal requires Kubernetes management services to enact cloud native mechanisms in event of maintenance or failures. Expect etcd to rebuild and replicate databases.
    • Kuberenetes master is like vCenter it is your central hub and master, if you lose it bad times. Making that more resilient is great.
  • Because containers are lightweight, one of their advantages is the ability to run a greater number of containers per server, than VMs
    • Scale, All machines can fail, so scaling the repopulation of that machine upon failure is key. Especially on the kubernetes master. If this drops having it built on a VM allows faster response and rebuild.
  • The people using and managing the container environments are likely not the same ones managing the vm environment.
    • This is a dumb statement. This basically is backwards thinking against DevOps stating that no ops and Dev can talk to each other. The whole Beauty of containers is the connection between Dev and Ops together.
    • Its not always a failure in communication as much as you’re speaking a different language than the other. You need to find a common ground and talk to each other.
  • The bare-metal contianer benchmarks demonstrated a 25-30% advantage over VM-based containers in both I/O and CPU processes.
    • Actual VM Benefits vs Theoretical Performace Advantage
    • Off course with #runkennyrun – He was the guy pushing bare metal for so long but now had changed his thought process especially with CSI (Container Storage Interface) that allows different solutions with vSphere. Now if you run this on bare metal you will need to verify that the CSI driver will run on bare metal. in VMware thats already built in(Not GA yet)
  • No mention of security… So lets talk about that
    • VM’s already come with security!
    • Heartbleed, spectre, meltdown and more require OS and firmware updates. How fast can you patch with bare metal automation???
  • Kubernetes on bare metal
  • Kubernetes on VMs(Linux VMs)

How PowerCLI Makes vSphere Configuration Management Easy [CODE2214U]

Kyle Ruddy @kmruddy kmruddy.com github.com/kmruddy podcast vbrownbag.com etc, etc… aka DA man

VMworld Video

  • Configuration Management
  • Runing a declarative IAC to verify a “indempotent” (repeatable) outcome
  • Why configuration Management Matters! SOURCE CONTROL DANGIT
  • Configuration Management Breakdown…
    • Central Node(and repo)
    • Yaml, JSON config file(whatever)
    • Endpoint node
    • Central Node pushes the config file to the endpoint and runs the config to setup whatever config is set.
  • You can use many different configuration managers
  • Ansible Example
  • PowerShell Definition
  • PowerCLI Definition
  • PowerShell Desired State Configuration
    • MOF = Manage Object Files
    • LCM = Local Control Manager
  • PowerCLI DSC = VMware.vSphereDSC
  • DSC for VMware
  • Sample configuration file setting NTPServer
  • DEMO = {Video will be posted once up.}
  • One More Thing…
    • vSphere configuration management exists in other configuration managers. Ansible, Chef, Puppet etc..
    • Ansible sample code.

Automating Hybrid Clouds with VMware Cloud Automation Services [MTE6051U]

Great talk with @virtual_crazo about vRA 8.0 and vRA cloud. Some amazing stuff out there coming out in the next couple of months.

 

Modern Apps Showcase with Kubernetes

VMworld Video

Showcase leaders:

  • Kubernetes is too interesting, and should be boring.
  • Modern Apps Framework
  • Tanzu initiative trying to modernize apps.
  • Build with Pivotal!
    • With the new stack utilizing pivotal, customers have been able to go from code rolls from every 6 months, to 3 times a week. Also it leads to self healing for the customers
    • Tanzu will lead to building modern applications:
    • 3rd party apps that can run in Tanzu – HASHICORP!! also Pure, and CloudBees
  • RUN
    • Project Pacific – Kubernetes on vSphere!
    • We live in a world where we demand modern and specific infrastructure
    • Verizon model after amazon flywheel to drive faster time to the market, and more capacity for innovation.
    • Articulating the value
    • Strategy for espansion
  • Manage
    • Manage kubernetes for developers AND IT
      • Tanzy Mission control is the central hub that runs and manages the solution
      • The control pane elements bind together to be a solid management platform for the managers of the resource.
  • DEMO.
    • Running a demo on Tanzu mission control First screen shows individual tags, multipls public/private clouds, and resources
    • k8s.vmware.com/vmworld-us

THE DAY!

I got my Al Rasheed selfy, An amazingly friendly, and wonderful human being:

Met and Selfied with @lost_signal the one and only John Nicholson!

This is what happens when vmworld says, “Quantity is limited” on a free t-shirt:

And I mean Pat… THE PAT

vExpert Party

Finally get to go to a party I’ve been looking forward too for a long time! So many great people to follow on twitter and to talk to. This party didn’t have huge artists or crazy loud music just good people and good discussion. From discussing all the different carreer paths to the new solutions they are playing with. These guys are always around and willing to help. If you use twitter, please setup a follow on the #vExpert tag so that we can all share in our experience, problems, and life. Thats what we are here for as the human condition!

On to the next day.

Nate

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