VMware NSX : Why we need it in SDDC.

VMware NSX – A Beginners Guide on why we need Network Virtualization!

VMware NSX – For past couple of days i was exploring VMware NSX and realized how great it would be to have it an SDDC, i thought to put what ever i learnt about vmware NSX in a series of blog posts so that it could help any beginner to get started with his journey in network virtualization .

As costs and complexities increase every company is moving towards a SDDC (Software Defined Data Center), but the present implementation of SDDC we don’t have 100% virtualization as Network is still hardware,

We can have either a Software Based networking or a Hardware based networking implementation in SDDC.

Lets see the advantages of going the Software Defined Networking way.

The first point is that we have all the intelligence built into software, in comparison to this the Hardware based networking depends on the firmware present on the hardware, this means that you are locked down to the vendor on how frequently new firmware upgrades get released which enables you with the latest features, also some of the H/W devices might not be compatible with other hardware in your environment which means you are locked into what the vendor supports and recommends.

With the advantage of software based networking we remove hardware dependency, we can have any kind of networking hardware but all the logic is built into the software layer, the hardware becomes just a way for you to pass the networking packets, how you want to pass it and where you want to send it is all defined in the software networking layer

This is where VMware NSX pitches in.

“What is VMware NSX”

VMware NSX is the next best thing which has happened to virtualization, it all started with the compute capacity where the CPU and Memory was virtualized with the introduction of VMs (Virtual Machines) and later storage capacity started getting virtualized with the introduction of vSAN and vVOLS, now with VMware NSX we even have started virtualizing the network capacity.

For any IT Service Provider or a consumer to have a true Software DDC you need to have everything virtualized, the figure below depicts what a 100% virtualized SDDC where all the core components of the SDDC are virtualized.

That’s all for now, i hope you enjoyed this beginners guide on why we need network virtualization and how VMware NSX helps you to fill in that missing gap and allows you to have a 100% virtualized SDDC.

An excellent resource to dig more into NSX in the VMware HOL on NSX

In the next series of posts we would be starting with the very basics of virtual networks especially the vDS (vSphere Distributed Switch), how it ties up into NSX, and later we would move on and have a look at installing and configuring NSX, also explore the concepts of VMware NSX, its real world benefits and explore the NSX api to automate various networking tasks.

Do check out some of my other Posts on NSX