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Archives for November 2018

VMware Cloud on AWS reInvent sessions posted

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In case you missed the big news this week at Amazon's reInvent conference, Pat Gelsinger (CEO of VMware) and Andy Jassy (CEO of AWS) announced together on stage VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2. For more details regarding the announcements, check out these two blog posts:

VMware had a number of VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) sessions at reInvent and most of them have already been posted online. Below is the current list and I will update it as new sessions are posted.

Given the amount of excitement and interests from customers on both VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2, session (ENT215) was repeated at reInvent to give some more information about the two solutions. In addition, you can also check out these two theCube interviews from each of our executives talking about both offerings.

ENT215 - Top Strategic Priorities You Can Tackle with VMware Cloud on AWS

CMP305 - VMware Cloud on AWS: Deep Dive

CMP360 - Supercharge VMware Cloud on AWS Environments with Native AWS Services

DAT375 - Deep Dive on Amazon RDS on VMware

ENT313 - Running Production Workloads in VMware Cloud on AWS

GPSTEC307 - Networking, Storage, and Data Protection Deep Dive with VMware Cloud on AWS

NET321 - Connectivity Options for VMware Cloud on AWS Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC)

Supermicro E300-9D (SYS-E300-9D-8CN8TP) is a nice ESXi & vSAN kit

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Supermicro kits such as the E200-8D is a very popular platform amongst the VMware community and with powerful Xeon-based CPUs and support for up to 128GB of memory, it is perfect for running a killer vSphere/vSAN setup!

Earlier this Fall, Supermicro released a "big daddy" version to the E200-8D, dubbed E300-9D and specifically, I want to focus on the 8-Core model (SYS-E300-9D-8CNTP) as this system actually listed on the VMware HCL for ESXi! The E300-9D can support up to half a terabyte of memory and with the 8-Core model, you have access to 16 threads. The E200-8D is also a supported platform by VMware, you can find the VMware HCL listing here.


I was very fortunate to get my hands on a loaner E300-9D (8-Core) unit, thanks to Eric and his team at MITXPC, a local bay area shop specializing in embedded solutions. In fact, they even provided a nice vGhetto promo discount code for my readers awhile back, so definitely check it out if you are in the market for a new lab. As an aside, when doing a quick search online, they also seem to be the only ones actually selling the E300-9D (8-Core) system which you can find here and in general, they seem to be priced fairly competitively. This is not an endorsement for MITXPC, but recommend folks to compare all prices when shopping online, especially as today is Black Friday in the US and Cyber Monday is just a few days away.

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Can a VM in the VMC Compute Network access the SDDC Management Network?

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Similiar to an on-premises vSphere deployment, VMware Cloud on AWS follows good security practices by isolating and preventing access to the SDDC Management Network including Virtual Machines running in the Compute Network. With that said, the SDDC can be configured to enable access to the SDDC Management Network for either all or subset of workloads running in the Compute Network.

I have seen this request come up a few times, usually around proof of concepts, lack of on-premises infrastructure or wanting to run completely isolated within VMC for Dev/Test purposes. Below are the step by step instruction on setting this up for both an NSX-V and NSX-T based SDDC. Once enabled, customers can access the vCenter vSphere UI from within the specified Virtual Machine(s) including using tools like OVFTool or PowerCLI for importing new or existing workloads.

Note: Please refer to this blog post here to determine if you are running an NSX-V or NSX-T based SDDC.

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