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Learning more about the Nitro platform which will power VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

12.04.2018 by William Lam // 1 Comment

With the big announcement last week between AWS and VMware, I know a number of folks have been wanting to learn more about the underlying hardware that currently powers the AWS Cloud including VMware Cloud on AWS and eventually the new VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts offering. Historically, AWS has not shared much information about their own hardware platform, but have started to talk more openly about their systems in the last two years.

At reInvent 2018, I had attended an awesome deep dive session Powering Next-Gen EC2 Instances: Deep Dive into the Nitro System by Anthony Liguori, a Sr. Principal Engineer who lead both the Nitro and Outposts development. This was a great talk providing some insights into the development of Nitro and the various components that makeup the system such as the Nitro cards, which provides hardware offload for both Storage and Networking and new in this years session, the Nitro Security Chip, which actually reminds me of the new Apple T2 Security Chip. Below is the recording for those that were not able to attend, definitely recommend a watch!

[Read more...]

Categories // VMware Cloud on AWS Tags // amazon ec2, Nitro, VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2, VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

VMware Cloud on AWS reInvent sessions posted

11.30.2018 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

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:

  • http://vmwa.re/vmc-outposts-exec-blog 
  • http://vmwa.re/vmc-outposts-blog

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.

  • Mark Lohmeyer (GM for VMware Cloud Platform Business Unit and my boss) talking about VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts
  • Tom Gillis (GM for VMware Network & Security Business Unit) talking about VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2

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

  • Video
  • Slide

CMP305 - VMware Cloud on AWS: Deep Dive

  • Video
  • Slide

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

  • Video
  • Slide

DAT375 - Deep Dive on Amazon RDS on VMware

  • Video
  • Slide

ENT313 - Running Production Workloads in VMware Cloud on AWS

  • Video
  • Slide

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

  • Video
  • Slide

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

  • Video
  • Slide

Categories // VMware Cloud on AWS Tags // reInvent, VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2, VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

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

11.23.2018 by William Lam // 33 Comments

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.

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Home Lab, VSAN, vSphere Tags // E200-8D, E300-9D, ESXi, homelab, Supermicro, VSAN, vSphere

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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