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VMware Cloud Foundation Architect specializing in VCF, NSX, and Infrastructure Automation

Author: Rutger Blom

  • Log Insight – Integration With Jenkins

    During some research I did for a customer on how to trigger an action based on an error event in the SDDC, I built myself a lab and ended up with a concept that seems interesting enough to write some lines about on the blog. High-Level The diagram below illustrates the “solution” at a high-level:…

  • Around the NSX-T Table(s)

    The NSX-T Central Control Plane (CCP) is building and maintaining a central repository for some tables that make NSX-T the unique network virtualization solution it is. More specifically I’m talking about: The Global MAC address table The Global ARP table In today’s article I’ll have a closer look at these two tables. MAC Address Table…

  • HCX Your Way To NSX-T Overlay

    Happy New Year! 🙂 In the last two posts we had a look at two different methods for extending VLANs to NSX-T overlay. In the first post we configured a bridge which works well in scenarios where we the source VLAN and destination NSX-T Edge can achieve layer 2 adjacency. In the second post we…

  • VPN Your Way To NSX-T Overlay

    In the previous article we had a look at how VLAN-connected workloads were migrated to NSX-T overlay by setting up a bridge between VLANs and NSX-T overlay segments. This works well in scenarios where layer 2 adjacency between source and destination environment can be achieved. In other words, we can stretch the source VLAN(s) to…

  • Bridge Your Way To NSX-T Overlay

    Organizations implementing NSX-T overlay have several options when it comes to migrating existing VLAN-connected workloads to NSX-T overlay segments. Common methods include re-IP’ing or re-deploying workloads to a new IP space allocated to NSX-T logical networking. It gives the workload somewhat of a fresh start. Besides, a re-IP process can be a very useful exercise…

  • SDDC.Lab v2

    Back in April I published a post about my GitHub repository containing Ansible scripts that perform automated deployment of nested vSphere/NSX-T lab environments. A lot has happened during the last 5 months and now that we’re close to making version 2 the default branch, I thought it would be a good time to give you…

  • Automate Ubuntu Server 20.04 Installation with Ansible

    And now something completely different. Recently, while working on a project, I had to come up with a way to automate Ubuntu Server 20.04 VM installations on vSphere. Utilizing Ubuntu’s new autoinstall method together with some Ansible code I managed to get something up and running. Decent enough to share it with you. Overview The…

  • Configuring NSX-T 3.0 Stretched Networking

    Configuring NSX-T 3.0 Stretched Networking

    NSX-T 3.0 comes with brand new features for logical networking in multisite environments. With NSX-T Federation the platform effectively receives a location-aware management, control, and data plane and this gives us, the implementers and architects, some very interesting new options when designing and installing NSX-T 3.0 in a multisite scenario. Although Federation affects all major…

  • Setting up VRF Lite in NSX-T 3.0

    Setting up VRF Lite in NSX-T 3.0

    NSX-T version 3.0 brings a new routing construct to the table: VRF Lite. With VRF Lite we are able to configure per tenant data plane isolation all the way up to the physical network. Creating dedicated tenant Tier-0 Gateways for this particular use case is now a thing of the past! With 100 VRFs per…

  • Nested vSphere and NSX-T Deployed With Ansible – April Update

    Nested vSphere and NSX-T Deployed With Ansible – April Update

    Some weeks ago I introduced you to my GitHub repository containing a set of Ansible playbooks helping people deploy a highly customizable vSphere 6.7/7.0 with NSX-T 2.5/3.0 nested lab environment. As I mentioned in the “launch” post, this project is a work in progress and during the last couple of weeks I’ve been spending many…