Eric Sloof

Cisco has announced a new pricing and packaging strategy for its flagship virtual switch portfolio. Starting with that new 2.1 release, which is now in beta, they will have two editions of the Nexus 1000V, an Essential Edition and an Advanced Edition. 

The Nexus 1000V Essential Edition will be available for free, plus a nominal annual support fee, in a move that Cisco believes will encourage customers and their partners to proliferate what has already become the most popular virtual switch in the industry with over 6,000 customers to date.

The Nexus 1000V Essential Edition provides all the rich Layer-2 networking features to connect virtual applications to the network and integrate into VMware environments, including: VXLAN capability, Cisco vPath service insertion, integration with vCloud Director, and a plug-in for management and monitoring in VMware’s vCenter Server. This free version will enable rapid, low-risk adoption of Cisco’s virtual network technology environments.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Essential Edition and the Advanced Edition (with Cisco Virtual Security Gateway) have the following features:

vSphere 5.1 and later allows you to rollback to previous networking configurations if a networking misconfiguration occurs. vSphere 5.1 also allows you to recover from any misconfiguration by connecting directly to a host to fix any networking issues through the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI). Rollback is available for use on both standard and distributed switches.

The management network is configured on every host and is used to communicate with vCenter Server and to interact with other hosts during vSphere HA configuration and operation. It is critical to centrally managing hosts through vCenter Server. If the management network on the host goes down or there is a misconfiguration, vCenter Server cannot connect to the host and therefore cannot centrally manage the vSphere infrastructure.In a vSphere standard switch (VSS) environment, you can recover from management network failure on the host by reconfiguring the host management network through a DCUI.

However, in the VDS environment, where multiple hosts are connected to a distributed switch, any network failure or misconfiguration of the management port group can potentially disconnect all hosts from the vCenter Server system. In this situation, vCenter Server cannot centrally make any changes to the VDS port group configuration and push those changes to hosts. The only way to recover from this situation is by going to individual hosts and building a VSS with a proper management network configuration. After all the hosts’ management networks have been reconfigured with a VSS and are able to communicate on the management network, vCenter Server can again manage the hosts and reconfigure the VDS.

To avoid such operational issues of going back to a VSS, if you do not have physical network interface card limitations on the hosts, you can make use of a VSS for the management network and a VDS for all other virtual infrastructure and virtual machine traffic. In such deployments, you must have at least four network adapters on the hosts: two connected to the VSS and two to the VDS.

The automatic rollback and recovery feature introduced in vSphere 5.1 addresses concerns regarding use of the management network on a VDS. First, the automatic rollback feature automatically detects any configuration changes on the management network. If the host cannot reach the vCenter Server system, it does not allow the changes to take effect. Second, you also have an option to reconfigure the management network of the VDS per host through the DCUI.

Source KB:  2032908

See also: Video - VMware vSphere 5.1 - Network Config Backup and Restore

A fundamental part of protecting IT is ensuring that the services provided by virtual machines are resilient, and  robust at all levels of the compute stack, from hardware through to the application. vSphere Replication is a feature introduced with VMware vSphere 5.1. It is designed to augment  the recovery capabilities of the VMware vSphere platform by providing a built-in capability to continually replicate a running virtual machine to another location.

Replication creates a copy of a virtual machine that can be stored locally within a cluster or at another site, providing a data source to rapidly restore a virtual machine within minutes. vSphere Replication augments offerings in the vSphere availability protection matrix. It provides a solution that enables recovery time better than that of restoring from backup, without introducing the complexity of a complete storage array–based replication configuration.

vSphere Replication also enables configuring replication on a per–virtual machine basis and significantly rounds out the capabilities of protection offered by vSphere. This paper will help you understand what vSphere Replication is and some of the benefits of its features. It will also discuss how it works to protect your virtual machines against failure.

Technical White Paper - Introduction to VMware vSphere Replication.pdf




See also: Video - VMware vSphere 5.1 - Replication Protection

This document provides the reference architecture for Stateless Virtual Desktops with VMware View 5 on local solid-state storage. A stateless desktop architecture is ideally suited for standard desktop environments where the desktop image is consistent from user to user; however with proper application design can be used in broad use cases. VMware View 5 allows specific placement of different types of disks to be re-directed, even to local storage, the I/O requirements on shared storage can be drastically reduced. The VMware View 5 Reference  Architecture for Stateless Virtual Desktops involves high-performing, solid-state drives within a physical host to offload the majority of desktop virtualization IOPS needed, while providing a stateless desktop virtualization design for planned and unplanned downtime.

This use of local solid-state drives (SSDs) is a completely new approach to desktop virtualization storage. SSDs are critical to achieving a low per-desktop cost because they remove the need for operating system and application storage requirements on the SAN. By decentralizing these storage needs, the desktop environment for CPU and memory resources scales linearly, with extremely low latency. The simplicity of the architecture that is enabled by View 5’s tiered storage capability allows for a new era in the evolution of desktop virtualization cost modeling.

Increasingly, organizations are turning to virtual desktop technologies to address the operational and strategic issues related to traditional corporate desktop environments. VMware View 5 provides not only a virtual desktop environment that is secure, cost effective, and easy to deploy; but now can also provide comprehensive storage flexibility. VMware View 5 modernizes the desktop experience to deliver private cloud capabilities to users for a consistent experience across the global enterprise. This Desktop-as-a-Service model is possible with unmatched scalability in a stateless design.

The challenges of traditional desktop administration, especially at scale, range from lost laptops with corporate data, security issues related to viruses or hackers, or simply ensuring IT resources can maintain a service level agreement (SLA) appropriate for specific end users. In addition to the challenges of operational management, IT must also consider the implication of broader system-wide issues such as compliance, corporate governance and business continuity strategies. This whitepaper provides full descriptions of the test environment as well as performance metrics captured during test validation.