Load-Balancing on VMware Cloud on AWS

This long blog post will describe how we can build a load-balancer on VMware Cloud on AWS. Any business application that requires a minimum level of scale or resiliency would require a load-balancer. As our customers continue to migrate applications to VMware Cloud on AWS (or spin up some new ones from scratch), many of […]

CCIE – 10 years!

I recently received a plaque from Cisco celebrating my 10 years as a CCIE and that made me reflect on the CCIE program and looking back on how networking has changed since then. For those not familiar with the CCIE, it stands for Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert and it was (and as far a I […]

Encryption on VMware Cloud on AWS: at rest and in-transit

Update 5th November 2020 with i3EN in-transit hardware level encryption between instances within the SDDC boundaries. This post will describe the various options to encrypt data residing on VMware Cloud on AWS or in-transit to and from VMware Cloud on AWS. In my conversations with customers, one topic will invariably come up: how do we […]

VMC Networking Options Video Overview

Networking Considerations and Best Practices

Before you undertake any network design, you must always consider the business requirements and use cases. Your chosen network design will be largely influenced by the chosen use cases.

Connectivity to Native AWS via Elastic Network Interface

VMware Cloud on AWS enables customers to seamlessly integrate their SDDC cluster to AWS services. This is achieved by connecting the SDDC cluster to the customer’s VPC of choice. During the onboarding process, customers have the ability to choose a VPC and the subnets they want to connect to their SDDC cluster.

HCX

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension delivers secure and seamless app mobility and infrastructure hybridity across vSphere 5.0+ versions, on-premises and in the cloud.

HCX offers bi-directional application landscape mobility and data center extension capabilities between any vSphere version. HCX includes vMotion, Bulk Migration, High Throughput Network Extension, WAN optimization, Traffic Engineering, Load Balancing, Automated VPN with Strong Encryption (Suite B) and secured data center interconnectivity.

This reference architecture document will not delve into all the HCX features but will instead on the standard use cases:

NSX L2VPN

For customers that need to maintain the same IP addresses after they’ve migrated workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS, they can use the NSX Layer 2 VPN functionality.

NSX has offered a L2VPN capability for several years. A L2VPN enables customers to stretch networks between two different sites, over a public or private network (with no requirements on MTU).

VMware Cloud on AWS uses NSX to provide L2VPN features in your cloud SDDC.

Edge Firewalls

The Management Domain is protected by a Management Gateway [MGW], which is an NSX Edge Security gateway that provides north-south network connectivity for the vCenter Server and NSX Manager running in the SDDC.

Networking on VMC on AWS – Internal Networking

In VMware Cloud on AWS, we have two logical domains – one for “Management Resources” (where the ESXi hosts, vCenter, NSX Manager and NSX Controllers are deployed) and one for “Compute Resources”, where data VMs are deployed.