VMworld 2017 Roundup: Day 3

The second full day of VMworld was one of the fullest. Onward!

General Session

For general session commentary, check out the Live Blog. The super-condensed version:

• Pivotal and VMware announce Pivotal Container Service (PKS), a joint offering that was developed in partnership with Google Cloud (the 'K' alludes to Kubernetes),

• VMware showed off the new PKS as well as AppDefense and Wavefront, via a fictitious customer story, and

• VMware Workspace ONE is now available for trial.

NetApp HCI, Simplicity AND Enterprise Scale [STO3308BUS]

Gabe Chapman started off the session by giving an overview of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). In theory HCI is software-defined compute, network and storage in a single package. In reality there have been (and still are, in cases) challenges with that approach. First generation HCI solutions had to compromise in the areas of performance, flexibility and consolidation to deliver a "single-box" product. This was often rooted in the limited ways in nodes were engineered to make the various infrastructure components available. If you needed more storage, you were forced to consume more compute, whether you needed it or not, and vice-versa if you just needed more compute and not storage. Depending on your workloads, the addition of more compute can increase your per-CPU licensing requirements (ex. Oracle, vSphere, Microsoft SQL) which means that extra storage you needed just got much more expensive.

NetApp's HCI offering is built on top of SolidFire Element OS, which takes care of software-defined storage, and VMware vSphere, which deals with software-defined compute (i.e. virtualization). These are tied together by the NetApp Deployment Engine, which reduces the steps and effort in deploying the solution. If a customer wants to leverage NetApp HCI for deliver file services, they can deploy a virtualized OnTap instance (NetApp ONTAP Select vNAS) that will make those services available while the customer can leverage the benefits of block-storage on the back-end.

NetApp HCI will be delivered as a four (4) node chassis. You need at least two compute nodes and two storage nodes, however you're free to extend nodes as necessary after that. Nodes are available in "t-shirt" sizes, meaning there are three sizes of compute nodes and three sizes of storage nodes to choose from.

Within NetApp HCI, the client can specify performance guarantee's per application through specifying minimum, maximum and burst IOPs. This allows you to create walled gardens around your apps, to make sure that you aren't as affected by "noisy neighbour" syndrome. If VVOLs are deployed, then these guarantees can be specified per VM, otherwise they'd be applied per VMDK. Thinking about the practicality of this, I'm thinking that there's likely going to need to be some sort of show-/charge-back to business units that ask for high IOPs guarantees. Otherwise all the business services will ask for high guarantees.

Gabriel cautions about watching out for what he calls the "HCI tax". He's seen that some HCI offerings deploy controller VMs that use anywhere between 16-128 GB of RAM and 4-8 CPUs each. This controller VMs take away from the resources available to VMs within each HCI node. Also watch out for some HCI solutions that do support deploying vCenter directly on the HCI solution, meaning you would need to find more infrastructure to house vCenter.

Back to the NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE), it is capable of deploying Element OS, ESXi, vCenter with relevant HCI plugins, and a single monitoring VM to the NetApp HCI environment. NetApp HCI has administrators manage their daily operations through the familiar vCenter interface, but also provides a REST-based API. The NetApp Data Fabric that is also part of NetApp HCI means that the solution can be integrated with AWS & Azure. The NetApp pedigree means that familiar NetApp features, like SnapMirror, can be leveraged to migrated storage/VMs from HCI to and from other NetApp-capable targets.

NetApp HCI general availability is targeted for October 27th of this year.

Upgrading to vSphere 6.5 the VCDX Way [SER2318BU]

Rebecca Fitzhugh, Melissa Palmer's session aimed to explain the VCDX-style approach to upgrading vSphere 6.5. First, you have to ask yourself why you want to upgrade? Upgrades shouldn't happen "just because". There should be demonstrated business value, such as: extended support life-cycle, compatibility with other technical services, or taking advantage of new features like vCenter Server HA or VM encryption.

The VCDX way means that you use a distinct methodology. Consider whether you want to re-host (i.e. in-place upgrade) or re-architecting, for example. Also plan the upgrade end-to-end before implementation starts. Make sure you actually validate post-implementation so that you can better answer the inevitable question: "Did it work after the upgrade?".

It's important to follow a design process, like: assess, design, deploy, and validate, making sure requirements identified in the assess phase are met in the validate phase. Perform a current state analysis against your existing environment so that you can figure out the dependencies and steps required to successfully upgrade. Tools and services that can help include: vROPs, vSphere Optimization Assessment, vCheck, or the vSphere Health Check (PSO).

Make sure that your design, if you're re-architecting, covers the common design qualities: availability, manageability, performance, recoverability and security. Understand how your organization ranks these design qualities and why? That will help drive and prioritize design choices, including the definition of key success criteria (which you should define from the outset).

Rebecca and Melissa then took the audience through a couple of design scenarios, illustrating how the VCDX approach can be applied to drive a successful vSphere upgrade.

VMware CTO Innovation Panel: What's Next? [FUT3025PU]

A cadre of VMware CTOs, specifically Ray O'Farrell, Christos Karamanolis, Shawn Bass, Mike Wookey, and Cameron Haight, took questions from the audience. They chatted about how VMware works on driving innovation. A major way that's done is via VMware's "Innovation Engine", which is how VMware fosters innovation, encourages cross-department collaboration and solves product challenges. It's quite encouraging to see that VMware has a focused view on which departments are innovation/R&D focused and which are product focused. It allows those innovation-focused areas to be detached from product enough to stay agile and flexible enough to work on different initiatives. Some of those initiatives make their way into product via that "Innovation Engine".

Aside from that illuminating overview, the CTO's fielded questions from the audience about futures for their respective areas. While they couldn't deliver promises or guarantees, naturally, they were fairly forthcoming about their drive to continue to push the company forward.

Delivering Infrastructure as Code: Practical Tips and Advice [DEV2704BU]

Peg Eaton delivered this session, which was dominated by DevOps overview and methods. DevOps principles include speeding up flow through value streams, fast feedback loops, and continuous improvement and experimentation. For me this was familiar ground (yes, I agree you should store your infrastructure related code in source control) so I ducked out a little early. Still valuable information for the audience, all of whom, except for a lone person, identified as ops/admin and not developer.

vExpert Reception

The vExpert Reception this year was held at the Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame. Unfortunately Pat Gelsinger was unable to visit with us this year, but it was still lauded as a great event where vExperts were able to catch-up or meet for the first time, bonding over technology and old-school pinball! Thanks to the VMTN and especially the vExpert crew for putting this on, it was appreciated!

Done Like Dinner

That's it for day three of VMworld 2017 US. If any of the sessions I've covered here are of interest to you, VMware typically makes session recordings available shortly after VMworld concludes.

Stay tuned for further round ups and reports from VMworld 2017 US.