Optimizing EVPN for Virtual Machine Mobility over the WAN

Organizations need to insure that their applications are available and performing. Server virtualization helps by enabling virtual machine mobility.  If a server is overworked or will be unavailable vMotion can be used to migrate live workloads to another server in the current data center or in another data center. This requires that the addressing including the MAC, IP address and VLAN ID remain the same so that sessions are not dropped when the VM move happens. This is done by extending the L2 domain to the new location, know as Layer 2 stretch. Within a subnet this is easy to do. Across subnets in the data center it becomes more difficult. Doing live migration over the WAN introduces considerable challenges. Juniper has introduced a number of technologies to make virtual machine live migration possible.

The challenge with VM mobility is how to do the Layer 2 stretch in a way that ensures that the VM can be reached after it is moved. There are a number of issues that need to be dealt with. The MAC and IP address no longer pinned to a site or to an interface as they have moved with the VM. You need fast convergence of network paths as VM moves so that traffic will reach it quickly. You need ingress and egress traffic convergence and optimization to avoid having traffic go through the former default gateway after the VM has moved. You need learning of the effects of the live motion event and information distribution control so that the network isn’t impacted by signaling traffic. You need proper L2 & L3 interaction so that everything happens in a timely manner to ensure the best experience for the users of the applications that are affected by the VM move. VPLS has been the traditional methods of doing this, and now Juniper is supporting EVPN to provide enhancements to the solution.

Simplifying the Network is the Key to Improving Application Performance

In order ensure application performance and increase productivity across the organization while trying to keep budgets under control Enterprise organizations have been increasingly evaluating and implementing a series of new technologies for the past few years. These technologies hold out the promise of increasing the agility of new application rollouts that deliver game changing services, and meeting the needs of the organization to understand the business and make timely and well informed decisions as well as meeting the changing needs of the organization as they adapt to moves, consolidations and mergers.

The first one of these technologies is server virtualization which is now reaching the middle of the bell curve of the adoption cycle with more than half of organizations at the pervasive or fully virtualized stage according to IDG. The next is cloud computing where investments are up over last year, and the year before, with private cloud now as the preferred model over public cloud. Lowering TCO is a top selling point for both private & public cloud. Cloud solves challenges around business continuity and disaster recovery by providing resources on demand, often in a pay as you go model. It also becomes more popular as organizations begin to see it as an alternative to large capital expenditures for infrastructure.

Inter Data Center Workload Mobility with VMware

Server virtualization has increasing become implemented in the data center because it enables higher utilization of physical servers increasing their value to the organization. By abstracting the server operating system from the server hardware, virtualization allows physical resources to be shared among many virtual machines. The capabilities of cloning, suspending, and migrating live VMs among a cluster of physical hosts enhances resiliency and performance of applications. Advancements in networking technology allow servers within a single cluster to be located across the entire data center, or in another data center some distance away, further enhancing application availability, but making this technology work isn’t simple.

The Case for Live Migration
There are may use cases put forward for live workload migration and they are covered in the document, and were also covered in my previous blog “Making the Case for Long Distance Virtual Machine Mobility.” These use cases include optimizing server resource utilization, optimizing resource consumption at various locations, hybrid cloud where overflow workloads move to another data center, and disaster avoidance were workloads are moved to saftey, as well as a follow the sun model where workloads move according to the time zone of users. Some scenarios for data center migration for live workloads can be accomplished without implementing complicated first-hop-responder and route-optimization techniques. Other scenarios are possible however, they require implementing protocols that share state and fate, thereby increasing the complexity and reducing the reliability of the connected data centers. As a result of these considerations the network is a critical factor.

Is VXLAN the Answer to the Network Virtualization Question?

Network virtualization is a growing topic of interest and for some good reasons as networks scale to meet the challenges of cloud computing they are running up against VLAN scaling limitations. There have been several network overlay technologies released that seek to address the challenges with network scaling and to enable workload mobility. One of these technologies is VXLAN. It has a few proponents who say that it can meet the requirements for network virtualization. While it sounds good on the surface, it is worth it to take a closer look. With VMWorld happening this week in San Francisco I’m sure that network virtualization will be a hot topic, especially considering the VMware Nicera news, so I thought I’d comment on it and offer some thoughts and options.

The Origins of VXLAN
The VXLAN buzz started during a keynote at VMworld in August 2011, when VMware CTO Steve Herrod announced the Virtual eXtensible LAN protocol, which VMware positions as a technology that “enables multi-tenant networks at scale, as the first step towards logical, software-based networks that can be created on-demand, enabling  enterprises to leverage capacity wherever it’s available. Networking vendors Cisco and Arista are actively promoting VXLAN and have collaborated with VMware to develop and test the technology on their products. Cisco highlighted VXLAN at their Cisco Live user conference again in June 2012 and Arista is demoing it at VMWorld, however with the Nicira announcement VMWare seems to have taken that next step. VXLAN sounds interesting, so let's see how good of an idea it is.

Meet up with Juniper at VMWorld San Francisco

Are you and your colleagues headed to VMworld next week? Stop by and meet the Juniper team at booth #1517 where will be talking about the security and network architectures needed to move to an agile virtualized datacenter. It's going to be interesting with all of the changes that are happening in network virtualization. I'm looking forward to some interesting keynotes and sessions as well as catching up with friends in the industry.

Juniper has a lot planned for the show including speaking sessions, and a slew of in booth demos, plus we are handing out USB car chargers. I'll be there on Sunday afternoon so stop by and say hello.

You should stop by our booth if you:
- Are virtualizing important apps or are from regulated industries
- Have service oriented application architectures
- Want to use the vMotion technology to move workloads around a datacenter
- Have an old network that you need to upgrade to enable greater performance and workload mobility
- Need to secure mobile devices for VDI or BYOD
- Want to learn how UAC or Secure Access can be run in a VMware environment

Making the Case for Long Distance Virtual Machine Mobility

With VMWorld coming up I’m reminded of a top of mind subject, virtual machine mobility. The reason for moving virtual machines is to better allocate server resources and maintain application performance. It’s a useful technology that works great in the data center. We also hear a lot about the need to move virtual machines across the WAN, live, without losing sessions. This is known as Long Distance vMotion or generically as long distance live migration. This might sound like a good idea, but it gets a bit complicated when you think outside the data center walls and across the WAN. It creates complexity in the network, as maintaining sessions requires keeping the same IP address and MAC address after the move.  There are many proposed use cases for it, but is it such a good idea?

Limitations of Live Migration
Long distance live migration over the WAN has limitations due to latency and bandwidth requirements and the complexity of extending layer 2 which is required to maintain the same MAC address. Issues include the potential for traffic coming first to the original data center where the gateway is, and then looping to the new data center where the VM has moved.  Traffic can also loop back over the WAN to reach the storage that stayed behind. There are also bandwidth requirements to handle the large scale movement, as well as issues with storage pooling and storage replication as well as the complexity of implementing the L2 bridging architecture. If we are going to deal with all of this complexity of moving virtual machines over the WAN there had better be a good reason to do it. But is there? Here is a look at the various use cases for long live migration that I have found.

The Myth of the Broadcast Domain Apocalypse

There is a train of thought that is popular with some network vendors and long time network engineers that there is a compelling need to “orchestrate” the physical network and the visualized-networking world.  This is expressed as a desire to ensure that VLANs are synchronized between the physical network switches and the virtual switches on the visualization hosts.

The Orchestrated VLAN Model
VMware has a concept of a “backing VLAN”. This simply put means that traffic belonging to a portgroup uses a configured transport VLAN when it traverses the physical network.  For example, if a group of VMs belong to a portgroup “backed” by a VLAN, that VLAN must be “allowed” on the trunk ports connecting all of the physical ESX hosts that are hosting any of those VMs.

In addition to this, it is argued that the trunk ports to ESX hosts that do not host a VM belonging to that portgroup should not “allow” the presence of the VLAN that backs that portgroup.  It is suggested that the reason for this requirement is that the unbridled propagation of VLANs will cause the ESX host to process broadcast packets it does not need to, with potentially dire consequences.

The VCE Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform

Organizations face increasing costs and security concerns created by the quantity and diversity of devices accessing the network, but they must still respond to the growing needs of the business. Now organizations can rapidly deploy a more secure, cost effective and flexible desktop environment using the Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform. See this video to learn how the you can deploy virtual desktops faster.

The Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform is a purpose-built solution that helps IT organizations to automate desktop and application management by enabling rapid deployment, reducing costs and improving security through centralization of the desktop environment.

Backstory: I wrote the script for this video and worked with the producer to get it completed. It was done for the launch of the FastPath solution for which I was the marketing manager.

Solving The Desktop Virtualization Challenge With Vblock FastPath

The Desktop Challenge
The traditional workplace experience used to be working at the office on a PC. Now, the workplace could be the office, the home, or any public location. Now we have more than PC's. Work tools also include tablets and smart phones. Network users could be anywhere, on any kind of device, and they'll need access to all forms of rich media like real time interactive video as well as voice. As a result of these changes organizations are faced with growing security concerns around access to applications and control over corporate data.

Virtualization has been used extensively over the last decade to consolidate servers, improve resource utilization, reduce power consumption, lower costs, and streamline server management. Many of the same issues around cost, complexity, and energy efficiency impact desktop users and IT administrators. Conventional desktop computing approaches are evolving to address an increasing number of regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA. We all know that data breeches are a major concern for corporations. Organizations are trying to protect data, and to simplify desktop management , while meeting the needs of users who demand greater mobility, more devices, and increased flexibility.

As a result of these challenges with desktop management organizations are looking for ways to deploy a more secure, cost effective and flexible desktop environment using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. With VDI organizations can centrally manage desktop images, ensuring a uniform experience for users no matter what platform they are using or where they are locates. With VDI company wide security posture is improved by keeping critical information in the corporate data center, not on the PC. Costs are reduced through centralized desktop management.

Vblock: Accelerating the Journey to Private Cloud

In the continuing quest for a fully virtualized data center, IT professionals have a new tool that promises to dramatically simplify the journey: the Vblock. This 60-minute TechWiseTV episode explores this latest advancement in unified computing and shows how it will make it easier for organizations to build out data centers.



You will learn how Vblock™ Infrastructure Platforms simplify the acquisition and deployment process by integrating best of breed technology from Cisco, EMC and VMware into prepackaged units of infrastructure that are optimized for a wide range of virtualized solution deployments and how since each Vblock is pre-built and ready for deployment and the modular design is highly scalable to meet growth needs, your projects will get completed faster and you will have investment protection, and lower total cost of ownership.

Backstory: This video was created by TechWiseTV, a team at Cisco and features my collegues from VCE. I used social media including the Cisco Data Center blog, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook to promote it and increase the views many fold. While at Cisco I created the Cisco Cloud Facebook page and managed the Cisco Cloud Linkedin Group. This also appeared on the Cisco Data Center blog site.

The Vblock Solution For Cisco Unified Communications

To succeed in today’s fast paced, global economy, businesses must be able to communicate and collaborate. This requires access to a range of voice, video, and messaging communication tools. While the essence of communication is to break down barriers, organizations today must contend with the barriers imposed by increasingly complex communications environments.

The VCE solution enables rapid deployment of Cisco® Unified Communications applications on Vblock™ Infrastructure Platforms to provide an integrated hardware and software solution that connects people, information, and teams, helping to enable comprehensive and effective collaborative experiences.

Watch the video “Cisco UC ‘As-A-Service’ Offers on Vblock Platform” which provides an overview of the solution, and what customers can expect and then read more to get the details on the solution.




Read more to get the details on the solution.

The Vblock Solution for Cisco Hosted Collaboration

The Market Challenge
Hosted Collaboration is a growing opportunity for Service Providers to expand their portfolio and meet customer needs. Cisco provides Unified Communications applications using the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) that enables service providers to deliver a range of services from IP telephony and voicemail to WebEx® conferencing. One of the biggest challenges facing service providers is getting services to market and meeting time to revenue goals. Revenue opportunities are missed when time is lost reviewing product specifications, testing configurations and determining the appropriate scale for a particular application.

The Vblock Advantage
The Vblock™ Infrastructure Platforms solution for Hosted Collaboration makes Cisco® Unified Communications and Collaboration applications and capabilities available in a hosted environment. Vblock™ platforms provide standardized units of best-of-breed IT infrastructure that can be managed as a single entity and easily scaled as a cohesive, multi-tenant system. With the Vblock solution service providers can bring hosted collaboration service to market rapidly and meet their time to revenue goals.

Video: Cisco HCS "As-A-Service" Offers on Vblock Platform

Optimizing your Hosted Virtual Desktop Delivery Architecture

Delivery of hosted virtualized desktops is seeing increasing up take by organizations that want to reduce the cost of deployment and management of end user systems. While desktop virtualization offers many advantages, there are benefits to be gained in performance, scaling and security that can be addressed by choosing the right hosting platform and networking components. By optimizing the network architecture organizations can host and deliver the highest number of view images and users sessions while keeping down the total cost of ownership.

For example by hosting virtual desktop images on the Cisco Unified Computing System organizations can greatly increase the number of images per server while reducing complexity, by taking advantage of capabilities such as memory capacity, virtualized adaptors, Unified Fabric and centralized management that is integrated with solutions from VMware.

By using Cisco ACE to provide server load-balancing services organizations can greatly increase the number of user sessions per server, while increasing system security, by taking advantage of SSL off load and TCP reuse capabilities and built in intelligent security functionality, and they can realize cost reduction through virtualization capabilities and integration with provisioning systems from VMware.