Happy May!
We have a number of exciting stories for you this month, all focused on getting the most out of your investment in VMware SD-WAN™. Over the past few weeks, our team has been reaching out to many of you who told us you had an interesting story to tell. We have heard so many stories about how we have helped make a difference in your life at work. From making your branches more reliable so you get fewer calls, to giving you deep insights with VMware Edge Network Intelligence on your Edge devices, to troubleshoot problems faster with fewer site visits, it’s clear most of you all have embraced what the VMware team has set out to accomplish.
Check out the sections below on how a large sporting goods retailer uses SD-WAN to support its stores, and our new customer screenshots section where a picture tells 1,000 words about a problem solved or a solution made!
I am also really excited to announce our webinar series on troubleshooting! This 6-week deep dive series will give you the chance to really get your hands dirty on solving your challenges at the edge! Be sure to register today!
Check out our other stories for this month:
- ICSA Labs certifies VMware Edge firewall
- SD-WAN Troubleshooting webinar series
- Tips and Tricks: Cloud edge
- VMware Explore teaser
- Leading sports retailer leveraging multi-cloud edge for better application visibility
- Edge version 4.0.x and 4.2.x approaching end of support life
- Screenshots: A picture is worth 1,000 words
One last thing, we have a huge favor to ask.
The Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure is being decided in the next three weeks! It would be fantastic if you could write a 5-star peer review for us with a killer title. These only take 10 minutes to do, but they have a HUGE impact on our placement. In appreciation of your time, we would be happy to send you $100 in global giving credits to direct to your favorite charity. Here is the link to the peer review site. Just show us the confirmation email once you submit the review and we’ll get you the credits.
ICSA Labs certifies VMware Edge firewall
We are pleased to announce that all VMware SD-WAN Edge series have received ICSA Labs Corporate Firewall Certification. Read more about the certification and what it means to you on our blog. You can also download the full report from ICSA here.
“Following rigorous security testing at ICSA Labs, both the VMware SD-WAN Edge 620 and the VMware SD-WAN 3400 satisfied all of the firewall security testing requirements in both the ICSA Labs baseline firewall and ICSA Labs corporate firewall testing standards. As a result, both these models and the entire series of VMware SD-WAN Edges attained ICSA Labs Firewall Certification having met all of the testing requirements.” – ICSA Labs Firewall Certification Testing Report
Troubleshooting webinar series
If you have enjoyed our Tips and Tricks section, this six-episode webinar series is for you!
We are excited to announce an entire six-week webinar series on troubleshooting your SD-WAN deployment (skipping the week of July 4th). We’ll have experts from our support engineering team walk you through the best ways to troubleshoot issues, identify common misconfigurations, and even look at new ways to use the API. This is our Tips and Tricks section on steroids. You don’t want to miss it. Recordings will be available after webinars, but only to registered users. Pass the invite around to anyone who might be interested.
Sign up here to get access to all of them!
Troubleshooting sessions are scheduled as follows:
- June 7th, 11:00 AM ET – Remote Diagnostics – Edge focused
- June 14th, 11:00 AM ET – Remote Diagnostics – routing protocol focused
- June 21st, 11:00 AM ET – High Availability Part 1
- June 28th, 11:00 AM ET – High Availability Part 2
- July 12th, 11:00 AM ET – Conditional Backhauls
- July 19th, 11:00 AM ET – API Use cases
Sign up once for all six sessions.
Tips and Tricks: Cloud Edge
This month’s Tip and Trick comes from our recent webinar on cloud edge deployments. During the webinar, David Wight and Tejbir Batth did a deep dive into the deployment methods and caveats for both AWS and Azure.
If you missed it you can still check it out here.
In AWS it is recommended to use a CloudFormation Template to avoid any potential mistakes or missed steps when setting up the virtual Edge. One of those commonly missed issues is to disable Source/Destination check on both inside and outside interfaces on the virtual Edge. By default, the interfaces are set to only accept traffic that is either destined for the interface, or coming from it. This obviously does not work well when you are trying to route traffic through an interface(s) that is destined for somewhere else.
To learn more about deploying in AWS check this out. For Azure look here.
VMware Explore
The show formerly called VMworld is back and in person!
Join us from August 29-September 1 in San Francisco. We can’t wait to connect with you, our customers, after years of virtual events!
Stay tuned to this newsletter for updates on SASE sessions, customer events, and more. We’re busy lining up compelling content, networking opportunities, and more for you! Be sure to check this newsletter for regular updates about sessions and gatherings.
In the meantime, register for the event here.
Customer spotlight: VMware and Hughes bring cloud innovation to sporting goods retailer
Hughes Managed Services brought a 400+ location retail chain to the cloud with VMware SD-WAN and Azure VMware Solution.
A large sporting goods retailer was seeking to expand and optimize cloud services and applications that support its core business operations at stores throughout the western U.S. The retailer wanted to enhance its ability to monitor application performance and integrate robust security at the infrastructure edge and cloud services. Working closely with Hughes Managed Services, a leading network technology and solutions provider, the retailer deployed Azure VMware Solution together with VMware SD-WAN to support its multi-cloud infrastructure, backed by next-generation security for on-premises network elements.
“Before VMware, we could offer very little application visibility,” said Kondala. “We could show which applications were in use, but had little information on their utilization, how and when they were being utilized, and how the infrastructure impacted them. The VMware SD-WAN Orchestrator lets us see how the network is performing — not only in the moment, but historically — for application-level visibility that our customers did not have before.”
Read more about one how one of America’s top retailers of sporting goods enables their business with the help of SD-WAN here.
4.0.x and 4.2.x approaching End of Support Life
VMware SD-WAN™ software versions 4.0.x and 4.2.x for VMware SD-WAN Edge, VMware SASE Orchestrator, and VMware SD-WAN Gateway are approaching the End of Support Life (EOSL). The important dates are shown in the table below. More information can be seen here in this KB article.
If you still have questions, contact your support provider for further assistance. If you have support entitlement with VMware, please raise a Support Request.
| Software version | SD-WAN component | End of general support | End of technical guidance |
| 4.0.x | Orchestrator Gateway Edge | September 30, 2022 | December 30, 2022 |
| 4.2.x | Orchestrator Gateway Edge | December 31, 2022 | March 30, 2023 |
Share your best screenshot!
We’d love to see some of your favorite SD-WAN in action screenshots. What kinds of things have you found in the Orchestrator to be very enlightening? We know you’ve got screenshots all across your desktop. Tell us the story and what you found interesting about it!
We love this graphic in the Orchestrator. This particular image shows how much work the SD-WAN technologies put into fixing the issues that once gave us an incredible amount of grief. In this particular image, the SD-WAN Edge optimizations made the most out of performance issues across all WAN links to prevent any users from any type of voice disruptions.
