Eric Sloof

This video shows a recorded whiteboard session created with Excalidraw and Dropbox Capture. It starts with an introduction into vSphere virtual networking using a standard switch. It also explains the benefits of using NSX segmentation compared to VLAN ID's. Finally, I'll discuss distributed routing and the distributed firewall. 

After 10 years of reliable duty, I’ve decided to replace my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012) with a new one. My choice is a new shiny MacBook Pro Model: Mac14,6 with an Apple M2 Max (m2) CPU: 12-core processor and 64 GB RAM.

I was aware of the Silicon CPU architecture being different, but I didn’t want to choose an older model MacBook with an Intel CPU. One of the first things I did was install VMware Fusion Professional version 13.0.2 and spin up a virtual machine with the ESXi on ARM fling. I soon discovered the M2 CPU isn’t supported.

vSphere ESXi 7.0.x will be the final release supporting Apple Mac platforms (88698)

I had to run something on all those cores, so my next challenge was getting the Photon OS up and running in a Fusion VM. I first tried to deploy the photon-uefi-hw14-5.0-dde71ec57.aarch64.ova file, but surprisingly I got the following message: “This virtual machine cannot be powered on because it requires the X86 machine architecture, which is incompatible with this Arm machine architecture host.” and I referred me to KB 84273.

Next, I downloaded and attached the photon-5.0-dde71ec57.aarch64.iso to a new virtual machine. After a power-on, the installation started successfully. Some next, next and finish clicks, and the Photon OS was up and running. 

I also want to give Windows a try, so I signed up for the Windows Insider program. As a member, you get access to the Windows 11 on Arm Insider Preview. Converting the VHDX into a VMDK is described in the following article: How to install Windows 11 on M1/M2 Mac using VMware Fusion Tech Preview by Jeff Benjamin.

Comments on X please.

Technical Overview of the latest version of vSAN, including vSAN Max.

This document contains the latest updates, aligned to NSX version 4.1.

Some highlights include:

Technology overview chapters:

• TEP HA (Ch3)
• VPC/Projects (Ch2)
• A/A Stateful Gateways (Ch4)
• Bare Metal edge hardware recommendation (Ch8)
• DPUs (Ch9)
• Update VRF route leaking (Ch4)

Design Chapter (Ch7):

• Projects
• 1 VC to many NSX
• MTU recommendation, Gateway vs. global MTU

With vSphere 8 and NSX 4, VMware has introduced support for SmartNICs or Data Processing Units (DPUs). The DPU implementation in vSphere is called vSphere Distributed Service Engine.

DPUs (SmartNICs) are network cards with built-in intelligence that can perform various network functions directly on the adapter through their own programmable processors. In addition to the networking accelerators, DPUs like NVIDIA BlueField also have general-purpose Arm processor cores that can run a full ESXi general system.

With the DPU technology, NSX services like routing, switching, firewall and monitoring are offloaded to the DPU from the host hypervisor. With these capabilities, it is possible to improve performance, free up resources on the host and isolate workload and infrastructure domains.

White paper: Optimizing Networking and Security Performance Using VMware vSphere and NVIDIA BlueField DPU with BWI 

When I’m teaching a VMware training course, I often use Excalidraw as a tool for creating online whiteboard sessions. There was a good use case for this tool during the COVID-19 period, when most training courses were delivered online through Zoom or WebEX.

But nowadays, when I’m teaching a training course at an onsite training facility, I’m still using Excalidraw as my whiteboard tool, even when I can use a normal whiteboard with real markers instead.

Compared to a real physical whiteboard, Excalidraw still offers some great benefits; like drag-and-drop, elaborate and sharing the created whiteboard sessions. Those tasks can be performed much easier when working with a virtual whiteboard.

Recently Oliver Draghi introduced a new plug-in, especially targeted at VMware architecture icons. He did a great job creating whiteboard elements like networks, routers, databases, racks and much more. This plug-in is freely available, you can use it in Excalidraw with a simple click of a button.

I’ve created a short video to demo this plug-in within an Excalidraw whiteboard session.

Links:

Excalidraw

Oliver Draghi on LinkedIn

VMware architecture icons

Excalidraw Libraries