I was pleased to be able to present a talk at the London VMUG today. They even let me choose the topic and after some consideration I decided to talk about my recent experiences at Canopy Cloud in designing and testing Cloud Networks in a VMware vCloud.
The presentation is in three parts:
First I discuss the gap between “server” & “networks” as technical disciplines and draw the conclusion that convergence is required for Cloud deployments – talking about the Infrastructure as a Team (IaaT)
Then I dive into the how and why virtual networking that we use today is not suitable for use in Cloud deployments. I try to highlight the problems of virtual networking that we use today and why it’s not meeting our requirements. I propose that using software appliances is a possible solution but highlighting the good & bad of this option. (There are no right answers).
Then the third section is a brief overview of Software Defined Networking and how it will impact Cloud Networking in the next two years.
Of particular interest to the audience and the questions afterwards was the palpable sense of relief that vendors will so remove the VXLAN requirement for IP Multicast in the Data Centre LAN in the near future. Simply, customers are not scheduled for upgrades for many years and the risk of IP Multicast is perceived as too high by most organisations.
Thanks to people who attended and put up with my ravings for nearly an hour. Many people even said nice things about the talk. Special thanks to them!
Please feel free to preview the presentation and you can download for your reading pleasure.
Direct link to SpeakerDeck – https://speakerdeck.com/etherealmind/cloud-networking-is-not-virtual-networking-london-vmug-20130425
Any chance of a recording?
AFAIK it was not recorded. Sorry – maybe someone else wants me to do again 🙂
If they do and its in London I want in. Great talk ..
I have to agree with your IaaT push. Just within the past year I have worked on projects that had that mentality and those that worked with a more traditional approach. Not only were the “IaaT” run projects more successful, but I found the
comradery that comes from understanding the challenges the other members on the team face made the work environment 1000% better. A lot less finger pointing and more people reaching out across discipline areas to help solve problems. As your presentation points out, cloud infrastructures are too complex to work in siloed groups. Makes me wonder, how long it will take for the slow moving bureaucracies that many of us work in to realize this? I know it won’t be fast enough.
It would be great to have this presentation with AV.
Greg’s talk was worth the visit to VMUG alone. A great talk – really enjoyed listening to his opinionated heavily spun views which made a whole lot of sense. Great stuff