Another VMworld is upon us!!! Sadly, it’s only virtual again this year. However, that does mean you can access many of the sessions on-demand.  This year, I am personally speaking in two breakout sessions, as part of a panel session and an Ask The Experts session. It’s been a fun ride trying to get all of the video content curated and edited in time.

Google Cloud VMware Engine VMworld 2021 sessions

If you are looking from some great GCVE content, then look no further. Here is a comprehensive list of GCVE focused VMworld 2021 sessions that you should not miss.

Sessions I am a part of….

MCL1195 – Migrate Your VMware Workloads to the Cloud? Let Me Google That for You

• Are you looking to digitally transform your business but not sure where to begin? In this session, we will show you everything you need to successfully migrate and modernize your VMware workloads to Google Cloud VMware Engine. Topics will include a service overview, key use cases, migration planning, common challenges, and how you can leverage more than 140 Google Cloud services to make the most of your data and applications. You will also hear from a joint VMware/Google customer who will share their recent migration experiences.

MCL1763 – Asking Google Cloud VMware Engine Experts (almost) Anything

• Interested in learning more about Google Cloud VMware Engine? Come speak with our expert panel of Google Cloud solutions engineers and hear about some of the top questions and innovations happening today. The expert panel will be taking audience questions.

MCL3047S – Turbocharge Your Cloud Transformation with Google Cloud VMware Engine

• Google Cloud VMware Engine provides a fast, easy, and integrated way for VMware customers to adopt Google Cloud. Fast-track and future-proof your cloud transformation with a Google-managed, operated and supported cloud service. You get the latest innovations in VMware vSphere, VMware vSAN and VMware NSX-T, and can seamlessly integrate with other services, such as Cloud Operations for monitoring/logging, BigQuery for analytics, Actifio for backup, and many more. In this session, we will cover an overview of Google Cloud VMware Engine, its use cases, and all the latest innovations that deliver significant, differentiated value for our joint Google and VMware customers.

MCL1764 – Google Cloud VMware Engine in Action: Migrate and Operate

• In this session, we will demonstrate how easy it is to migrate your first workload to the cloud with just a few clicks. Through demos, we will define what you need to start, then cover how you can quickly migrate to and operationalize your environment within the cloud. See how Google Cloud VMware accomplishes this, all without re-architecting applications.

Other Google Cloud VMware sessions…. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my recent move to Google, I’m working on quickly getting up to speed on the Google Cloud VMware Engine service.

There is a lot of good content out there already, however, it is in various different places. So I’ve decided to create a quick post linking to the various resources that I found. At this stage, they are in no particular order and the list will likely grow over time.

Google Cloud VMware Engine

• Homepage: https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine
• Documentation: https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine#section-5
• Use Cases: https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine#section-6

Google Cloud VMware Engine Overview – Hands-on Lab

• Link: https://docs.hol.vmware.com/HOL-2021/hol-2179-01-ism_html_en/
• A VMware hosted Hands-On lab covering an overview of the GVCE service and also looking at migration to GCVE using VMware HCX.

Google Cloud VMware Engine Logical Design Poster for Workload Mobility

• Link: https://cloud.vmware.com/community/2021/02/25/introducing-google-cloud-vmware-engine-logical-design-poster-workload-mobility/
• The goal of this poster is to provide customers a logical view of what is required to start migrating workloads to GCVE

Google Cloud VMware Engine cheat sheet

• Link: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/google-cloud-vmware-engine-cheat-sheet
• Video: https://youtu.be/FJGNj_j2BY8
• This blog post will take you through Google Cloud VMware Engine, its benefits, features, and use cases.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Deploying a GCVE SDDC with HCX (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/02/gcve-sddc-with-hcx/
• This first post walks through the prerequisites, deploying an SDDC with VMware HCX, and accessing vCenter via VPN Gateway (i.e., OpenVPN).

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Network and Connectivity Overview (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/03/gcve-network-overview/
• This post provides an overview of the networking configuration and capabilities, and how to connect to it from an external site.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Connecting a VPC to GCVE (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/02/gcp-vpc-to-gcve/
• This post shows the process of connecting a VPC to your GCVE environment, and we will use Terraform to do the vast majority of the work.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Bastion Host Access with IAP (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/03/gcve-bastion/
• This post builds on the previous posts in this series by deploying a Windows Server 2019 bastion host to manage our Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) SDDC.

Intro to Google Cloud VMware Engine – Common Networking Scenarios (Matt Elliott)

• Link: https://networkbrouhaha.com/2021/05/gcve-networking-scenarios/
• This post will cover some common networking scenarios in Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE), like exposing a VM via public IP, accessing cloud-native services, and configuring a basic load balancer in NSX-T.

Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine Architecture

• Link: https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/horizon-on-google-cloud-vmware-engine-architecture
• This post provides information about architecting VMware Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine.

Google Cloud VMware Engine – Short Demo Video

• Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYBjhyuyG54&ab_channel=GoogleCloudTech
• This demo provides an overview of the platform and shows how you provision an instance and manage it – all from within the Google Console

Introduction to Google Cloud VMware Cloud Engine – Training Course

• Link: https://acloudguru.com/course/introduction-to-google-cloud-vmware-cloud-engine
• This course will teach you the fundamentals of Google Cloud VMware Engine

How to use multi-VPC networking in Google Cloud VMware Engine

• Link: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/how-to-use-multi-vpcs-with-google-cloud-vmware-engine
• This post explores in more detail the benefits and use cases that multi-VPC networking enables

How to leverage global address resolution using Cloud DNS in Google Cloud VMware Engine

• Link: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/vmware-engine/how-to-use-cloud-dns-with-google-cloud-vmware-engine
• This post explains how to leverage Google Cloud DNS with GCVE

I am delighted to announce the next chapter in my career. Today is my first day working for Google! Google Cloud to be specific. The Google Cloud VMware Engine, Center of Excellence to be even more specific!

For me, this a very exciting point in my career. Since the very very days of my IT career, I’ve always been an admirer of Google and all of the services they offer. I was an early Gmail Beta user, back in the day when someone had to invite you to use it. I’ve been an Android user since I brought my HTC Hero back in 2009. I’m all in on Google Home, GoogleTV, YouTubeTV, the list goes on.

Here are a couple of photos of me, the first taken back in 2013 on probably one of my first trips to the US. I just had to visit the Google campus! Who knew that 8 years later, I’d end up working for Google.

The second photo was taken just after I accepted my role at Google a few weeks ago. (I’m not sure why its arms are now missing)

Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE)

So what will I be doing? I’ll be working in various ways with the Google Cloud VMware Engine service. Assisting Google customers, creating solution/reference architectures, whitepapers, enablement content, speaking at conferences, etc.  If you’ve not heard of GCVE before now, you soon will! I can promise you that.

Taken from the Google Cloud VMware Engine official website, this sentence sums GCVE up nicely.

Migrate and run your VMware workloads natively on Google Cloud.

So I’ll still be working closely with VMware technologies as I have done for the past 15 years. However, in addition, I will be helping our Google Cloud customers on their journey to integrate their existing legacy VMware workloads with the plethora of cloud services offered on the Google Cloud Platform.

It’s an exciting time to be working in the public cloud and to be working for a company that is continuously innovating and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. I cannot wait to get stuck in.

In episode thirteen of The VCDX Podcast, I am joined by two special guests who share their experiences of defending remotely and offer up plenty of great advice on how to tailor your preparation for a remote defense.

News & Updates

New VCDX’s

Congratulations to the newly minted VCDX’s since our last episode. All VCDX’s can be found in The VCDX Directory

VCDX #291 – Pawel Piotrowski – Poland – (DCV)
VCDX #292 – Asaf Blubshtein – US – (DCV)

Important Dates

The forthcoming online VCDX Workshop:

• Friday, Feb 26th, 2021 – Register Here

Up and coming application deadline for the June 2021 VCDX Defenses:

• Thursday, April 8th, 2021 (Don’t wait until the deadline to submit!!)

All important VCDX dates can be found on The VCDX Calendar 

Interview Notes & Links

This episode’s special guests are:

• Chris Noon (#289) – https://vmusketeers.com/
• Asaf Blubshtein (#292) – https://softwaredefinedcoffee.com

Products discussed in the episode:

• Apple Pencil
• AirSketch Pro
• Huion HS611

 

Q&A

As always, if you have any questions you want answering on the Podcast, please send them to me via the two options below:

• My Twitter account: https://twitter.com/simonlong_
• Or find me on The VCDX Prep Slack Team

I’m always looking for feedback and ways to improve the podcast, so please, contact me with any thoughts and feedback you might have. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe (using the links below) and let others know about it on social media.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:19 — 68.3MB)

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In my recent ‘Getting started with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OVCS)’ post; Getting Started With Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) – Connecting To An On-Premises Environment we set up hybrid connectivity between our on-premises vSphere environment and our OCVS SDDC allowing our on-premises workloads to communicate with workloads running in our workload overlay network.

Posts in this series:

• Deploying A Bastion Host
• Deploying The SDDC With HCX
• Deployment Overview
• Networking Configuration
• Connecting To Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Connecting To An On-Premises Environment
• Migrating Workloads Using VMware HCX

In this blog post, which is the last blog post in this series, we are going to install VMware HCX in our on-premises vSphere environment and set up a site-pairing between our on-premises environment and our OCVS SDDC. Once we have HCX configured, we will test our connectivity by migrating workloads between our sites. We will also configure an extended network between both sites using HCX. This allows virtual machines to move between sites without the need to change IP addresses.

NOTE: As this is not a HCX focused post, we will not be going into the details of how we configured our HCX service mesh. If you are not familiar with configuring HCX, I’d recommend following VMware’s official documentation: VMware HCX User Guide.

Here is a high-level diagram of what we are going to be configuring.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my recent ‘Getting started with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OVCS)’ post; Getting Started With Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) – Connecting To Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services we deployed a Windows Server into our OCVS SDDC and connected it, using NFS, to an OCI File System that will be used to store files and folders for our users.

Posts in this series:

• Deploying A Bastion Host
• Deploying The SDDC With HCX
• Deployment Overview
• Networking Configuration
• Connecting To Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Connecting To An On-Premises Environment
• Migrating Workloads Using VMware HCX

In this blog post, we are going to look at connecting our OCVS SDDC environment to our on-premises vSphere environment, so that our workloads in both environments can communicate with each other. There are two main ways of connecting OCVS to an on-premises environment. Oracle FastConnect or Oracle VPN Connect. In my environment, I will be using an Oracle FastConnect connection provided by Megaport.  As there are many other ways of setting up a FastConnect via other services, I will not document that section step-by-step.

Here is a high-level diagram of what we are going to be configuring.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my recent ‘Getting started with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OVCS)’ post; Getting Started With Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) – Networking Configuration we familiarized ourselves with the OCVS networking configuration, including NSX-T. Now that we have a better understanding of how the networking is configured within the environment, we can start to look at connecting our workloads running within our OCVS SDDC to other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Services.

Posts in this series:

• Deploying A Bastion Host
• Deploying The SDDC With HCX
• Deployment Overview
• Networking Configuration
• Connecting To Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Connecting To An On-Premises Environment
• Migrating Workloads Using VMware HCX

In this blog post were are going to deploy a Windows Server into our SDDC and connect it to an OCI File System that will be used to store files and folders for our users. This is a very simple example chosen to illustrate how easy it is to connect OVCS workloads to OCI services. This is a high-level diagram of what we are going to be configuring.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my recent ‘Getting started with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OVCS)’ post; Getting Started With Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) – Deploying The SDDC With HCX we deployed ourselves a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) along with VMware HCX into Oracle Cloud.

Posts in this series:

• Deploying A Bastion Host
• Deploying The SDDC With HCX
• Deployment Overview
• Networking Configuration
• Connecting To Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Connecting To An On-Premises Environment
• Migrating Workloads Using VMware HCX

In this post, I’m going to review the overall networking configuration, including NSX-T.

ESXi Host ‘Oracle Cloud’ Connectivity

First, let’s take a look at how the ESXi Hosts are connected to the Oracle Cloud infrastructure.

1. Login to the OCVS console
2. Select the correct Region. (This should be the same region that the SDDC and the Bastion host were deployed)
3. Click on the burger icon at the top left of the screen to display the menu
4. Scroll down on the left-hand side menu and select VMware Solution
   • Select the name of your newly deployed SDDC
   • Scroll down to the ESXi Hosts section
   • Select one of the ESXi Hosts (Compute Instance column)
   • Scroll down to the Metrics section
   • Select Attached VNICs on the Resources menu (left-hand side of the page)

Here we can see virtual network interfaces, Subnets, and VLANs that are attached to the ESXi Host. The following diagram illustrates a single ESXi Host’s connectivity to the various VLANs deployed as part of the SDDC configuration. As we go through the networking configuration, the diagram will begin to make more sense.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the most recent ‘Getting started with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OVCS)’ post; Getting Started With Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) – Deploying The SDDC With HCX we deployed ourselves a VMware vSphere Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) along with VMware HCX into Oracle Cloud.

Posts in this series:

• Deploying A Bastion Host
• Deploying The SDDC With HCX
• Deployment Overview
• Networking Configuration
• Connecting To Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Connecting To An On-Premises Environment
• Migrating Workloads Using VMware HCX

In this post, I’m going to do a high-level review of the SDDC deployment which includes the VMware vSphere components (vCenter, ESXi Hosts), NSX-T Manager, and VMware HCX. Subsequent posts will dive deeper into the configuration.

SDDC Deployment Overview

 

1. Login to the OCVS console
2. Select the correct Region, this should be the same region that the SDDC and Bastion host were deployed into
3. Click on the burger icon at the top left of the screen to display the menu
4. Scroll down on the left-hand side menu and select VMware Solution
   • Select the name of your newly deployed SDDC

We are now presented with the SDDC information. This page contains all of the important URLs, IP Addresses, Usernames, Passwords that you’ll need to access and manage your environment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Following on from my recent post; Getting Started With Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) – Deploying A Bastion Host which documents the steps needed to deploy a bastion host on Oracle Cloud, that will be used to access our OCVS SDDC. We can now deploy the SDDC, including VMware HCX (optional).

Posts in this series:

• Deploying A Bastion Host
• Deploying The SDDC With HCX
• Deployment Overview
• Networking Configuration
• Connecting To Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Connecting To An On-Premises Environment
• Migrating Workloads Using VMware HCX

As you will see, the deployment process is very simple and straightforward. Once we have successfully deployed the SDDC and HCX, in the next blog post in this series, we’ll take a closer look at how the solution is deployed within Oracle Cloud.

Prerequisites

• SSH Keys
  During the deployment of our bastion host, we created a set of keys (public and private) that were used to access the bastion host via SSH. The same approach is used with the ESXi hosts in the SDDC. Instead of providing a root password, we need to supply our public key.

Deploying the SDDC

Read the rest of this entry »