Wondering what it takes to architect a cross cloud network? Join this podcast to hear Venky Despande, Director of Product Management for VMware NSX, talk about how VMware’s broad portfolio of software defined networking solutions can help.
In our most recent Multi-Cloud podcast, Eric Nielsen and I had the opportunity to talk with Venky Despande about the role that VMware NSX® plays in simplifying network operations across a multi-cloud landscape. Venky is a Director of Product Management for VMware NSX.
Pioneering software-defined networking
It’s been nearly 8 years since VMware acquired Nicera Software. At the time of the acquisition, Nicera was pioneering the then nascent technology domain of software-defined networking (SDN). Through VMware NSX, VMware has continued to be a to pioneer in the area of SDN.
Moving network functionality into a software layer than can span an entire environment dramatically simplifies the configuration and management of your network. Use cases include everything from network connectivity to load balancing. SDN also makes it far easier to improve network security. With SDN, organizations have the ability to broadly deploy software-defined firewalls to protect applications, something that is prohibitively expensive and massively complex to implement if you are attempting to do the same with physical gear only.
SDN provides programmatic access to functionality. This makes it easy to automate network operations. You can embed network functions into larger automated processes such as the provisioning of a complete software stack. SDN also simplifies the application of policies. Network and security policies can automatically adjust to changes in the environment in real time. This simplifies management and also reduces the risk that comes from disconnected processes when a change is made to the compute or storage environment and someone has to ensure that network and security configurations are adjusted after the fact.
From data center and VMs to hybrid cloud and modern apps
We started our conversation with Venky by looking at how NSX improves IT operations in the data center. We then extended the conversation to look at the same concepts at work in a hybrid cloud scenario. Our focus here was on understanding how organizations address networking in a VMware Cloud™ on AWS environment.
Our discussion wasn’t limited to how networking relates to just VMs. We also talked about how NSX is extending its capabilities to support networking requirements for modern applications. Venky gave us a quick tour of VMware Tanzu™ Service Mesh™. This new offering addresses networking requirements for applications that utilize micro-services, containers and Kubernetes. This new capability integrates with the larger NSX portfolio to address the full scope of enterprise networking needs.
Listen to the latest episode of the Multi-Cloud podcast on SoundCloud. If you missed any of our other multi-cloud podcast episodes, you can find them all on our SoundCloud playlist.
Or, click here to learn more about VMware NSX.
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