Network Virtualisation... Your thoughts?

Asif Dasl

This video is worth watching. Very interesting, I just wanted to sound out the networking guys/gals here. How do you think this will change the job of a network engineer?

Some points made were:

The simple value propositon of network virtualisation - reducing the time it takes to do network provisioning - that's what is making people write checks today.

40% of virtualisation admins also manage virtual switching.

77% of VMware customers are preparing for network virtualisation.

70% of VMware deployments work over Cisco gear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI9Zhm8a8oc

This is a quick simple overview of the process.

This is a more technical configuration video.

Any thoughts on this?

EdTheLad

I use a remote terminal to access devices, weather i'm accessing a physical device or a software image sitting on a server doesn't matter. This will make automation easier and improve software continuity across platforms hence making my life easier. For me it's like going back in time, previously most vendors wanted to move everything from the processor to the linecard, now they want to go the other direction and move from the device to a central management server. It makes sense now that we have faster links and grunty cpu's.
I've worked on these type of central management systems in the past, i've seen networks falling over due to database corruption etc. In the end network engineers will need to have more server, database and scripting knowledge.

ande0255

A coworker told me last night, that the last cisco Live conference he went to, that they announced that the 10.x platform of CUCM / CUC / all that stuff will be completely virtually supported, so I signed up for some VMware courses tonight.

When Cisco TAC asks you how to servers are hosted, and you fumbling are vsphere saying "Hold on" is pretty embarrassing too, so it's not a matter of if, but when.

So, start studyin

xenodamus

Thanks for the links. Those explained the basic premise more clearly than a lot of articles I've read.

I'm no network engineer, but I've been working with virtualization for over a year now. It sounds like this movement is simply making the physical network manageable using the same methodology that we've been using in virtual networks for some time now. I've never heard it explained that way, but it makes much more sense to me now.

Asif Dasl

Thanks for the replies, I think the thing that threw me in the video was the piece at the end when he says you can use "dumb switches" - well, after a little research, those "dumb switches" are still quite expensive that run Layer 3 ECMP. Maybe this is a relative thing as I am not a network engineer.

This is a 1.0 release so I find this an exciting area to understand. It looks stupidly simple to setup VMs & routers using NSX almost like GNS3 but with a web console. But I'm sure Cisco will still be in the datacenter mix, but this could also be a threat... interesting times.

Jon_Cisco

Very good video. I finally found an hour to watch it.