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vCloud Director Networking for Dummies BY MASSIMO, ON SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2010 During the Beta phase of vCloud Director (aka Redwood) I put together a small deck called “Redwood Networking for Dummies”. I have received a number of positive feedbacks so I decided to turn that document into a blog post. Networking in vCloud Director is certainly a controversial matter. I believe it is fair to describe it both complex and rich at the same time. There have been many attempts lately to describe it from the like of Duncan Epping and Hany Michael on their own Blogs. They have done a great job in getting into the details. However I‟d like to try to give a different perspective on the subject. While I won‟t be able to avoid all of the technicalities, I‟d like to give you a sense of the philosophy behind what we have built into the product. Last but not least note that there are a couple of approaches to describe networking in vCloud Director. The first approach starts with the cloud end-user in mind and describes how networking works in support of certain application deployments use cases. From there you can walk all the way down to describe what happens at the vSphere platform level. The second approach starts with the vSphere administrator in mind and describes how networking works building up from the vSphere constructs, all the way to what gets exposed to the cloud end-user. In this post I am going to use the second approach. This is not because I believe it is the right one but simply because it is the one I am more comfortable with and the one that may serve better the readers of this blog. So let‟s get started. Introduction to vCloud Director Networking Before we get into the matter, you need to step back and think about the vCloud Director philosophy for a moment. Cloud is all about giving the end-users an unprecedented level of flexibility that allows them to do things that were only available to vSphere administrators before. In a way you can think of vCloud Director as an interface (or a proxy) into the virtual infrastructure. This allows vSphere administrators to give end-users a lot more flexibility, but at the very same time it allows them to keep full control of what end-users can do. Achieving this level of cooperation and flexibility in the networking subsystem is no trivial task. Think about how it is difficult to implement something that allows an end-user to create, in self-service mode, separate layer 2 network segments, define custom layer 3 IP policies, configure services such as DHCP, NAT and Firewall… all without having to ask the vSphere / cloud administrator to do that for you, all without messing up with the cloud-wide setup, all without causing conflicts with the other tenants on the cloud. This is a titanic effort, believe me. Explaining how networking in vCloud Director (vCD from now on) works is really like pealing an onion. If I was to explain it with the cloud end-user in mind I‟d start from the outer part getting into the middle of it. Since I am going to explain it from the vSphere administrator point of view, I will have to start from the inner part of the onion building up the abstraction levels that the end-user will see in the end. This document will try to explain the three major networking levels within vCD. They are External Networks, Organization Networks and vApp Networks. These are in fact the type of networks you can instantiate. Before we start discussing these three network layers we need to introduce another concept that is of paramount importance for vCloud Director operations: Network Pools. Think about it for a minute. How can we give an end-user a controlled way to deploy layer 2 networks? Layer 2 networks are usually vSphere PortGroups with an associated VLAN. How can you keep control of that? How can you let different tenants deploy these PortGroups keeping track of what‟s going on in the cloud (and in turn on the vSphere layer) and, in doing so, avoiding conflicts with similar
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vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

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Page 1: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

vCloud Director Networking for Dummies BY MASSIMO, ON SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2010

During the Beta phase of vCloud Director (aka Redwood) I put together a small

deck called “Redwood Networking for Dummies”. I have received a number of

positive feedbacks so I decided to turn that document into a blog post. Networking

in vCloud Director is certainly a controversial matter. I believe it is fair to describe it

both complex and rich at the same time. There have been many attempts lately to

describe it from the like of Duncan Epping and Hany Michael on their own Blogs.

They have done a great job in getting into the details. However I‟d like to try to

give a different perspective on the subject. While I won‟t be able to avoid all of the

technicalities, I‟d like to give you a sense of the philosophy behind what we have

built into the product. Last but not least note that there are a couple of approaches

to describe networking in vCloud Director. The first approach starts with the cloud

end-user in mind and describes how networking works in support of certain

application deployments use cases. From there you can walk all the way down to

describe what happens at the vSphere platform level. The second approach starts

with the vSphere administrator in mind and describes how networking works

building up from the vSphere constructs, all the way to what gets exposed to the

cloud end-user.

In this post I am going to use the second approach. This is not because I believe it

is the right one but simply because it is the one I am more comfortable with and the one that may serve better the readers of this blog. So let‟s get started.

Introduction to vCloud Director Networking

Before we get into the matter, you need to step back and think about the vCloud

Director philosophy for a moment. Cloud is all about giving the end-users an

unprecedented level of flexibility that allows them to do things that were only

available to vSphere administrators before. In a way you can think of vCloud

Director as an interface (or a proxy) into the virtual infrastructure. This allows

vSphere administrators to give end-users a lot more flexibility, but at the very same time it allows them to keep full control of what end-users can do.

Achieving this level of cooperation and flexibility in the networking subsystem is no

trivial task. Think about how it is difficult to implement something that allows an

end-user to create, in self-service mode, separate layer 2 network segments, define

custom layer 3 IP policies, configure services such as DHCP, NAT and Firewall… all

without having to ask the vSphere / cloud administrator to do that for you, all

without messing up with the cloud-wide setup, all without causing conflicts with the

other tenants on the cloud. This is a titanic effort, believe me.

Explaining how networking in vCloud Director (vCD from now on) works is really

like pealing an onion. If I was to explain it with the cloud end-user in mind I‟d start

from the outer part getting into the middle of it. Since I am going to explain it from

the vSphere administrator point of view, I will have to start from the inner part of

the onion building up the abstraction levels that the end-user will see in the end.

This document will try to explain the three major networking levels within vCD.

They are External Networks, Organization Networks and vApp Networks. These are in fact the type of networks you can instantiate.

Before we start discussing these three network layers we need to introduce another

concept that is of paramount importance for vCloud Director operations: Network

Pools. Think about it for a minute. How can we give an end-user a controlled way to

deploy layer 2 networks? Layer 2 networks are usually vSphere PortGroups with an

associated VLAN. How can you keep control of that? How can you let different

tenants deploy these PortGroups keeping track of what‟s going on in the cloud (and

in turn on the vSphere layer) and, in doing so, avoiding conflicts with similar

Page 2: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

deployments in other tenants (aka Organizations)? vCloud Director solves this

problem using what we call Network Pools. A Network Pool is in fact a set of layer 2

networks that the cloud administrator has declared as “available”. Think about it: in

the old days when the end-user needed something like this he/she had to go to the

vSphere admin which would in turns look into his/her VLAN CMDB (typically an

EXCEL spreadsheet ), he/she would chose an available VLAN and would create a

PortGroup based on that. He/she would then connect the vNIC of this end-user‟s

VM to the newly created PortGroup and advise the end-user that the change was

made to the VM. In a cloud self-service model it doesn‟t work like this. If the end-

user can deploy layer 2 networks there must be a CMDB that can be

programmatically be accessed under the covers (by the end-user). Yes Network Pools are, in a way, that CMDB. More on this later.

External Networks

The vCD inner networking component is called External Networks. If you want your

Organization (and in turns your vApps) to have connectivity to the external world

you need to have External Networks. As the word implies, these are networks that

are managed by someone that is typically external to the vCD environment and are

identified by a vSphere PortGroup. That‟s in fact what you do when you create a

vCD External Network: you point to an existing vSphere PortGroup. Essentially you

are telling vCloud Director that there is a PortGroup that is able to provide external

connectivity to your cloud environment. The typical example is a PortGroup with

VLAN 233 (for instance) which can support native Internet traffic. For naming

convention you will be calling this External Network something like Internet or Ext-

Net-Internet. I usually suggest to name the vCD External Network after the

vSphere PortGroup for ease of tracking. This is a picture that shows what it is. It‟s easy:

One of the most confusing points about the creation of the External Network is that

the wizard asks for some layer 3 configuration parameters. In particular the wizard

asks for a subnet mask, a default gateway, a DNS address and a pool of IP

addresses. What are these parameters for? Well, remember that we said External

Networks are networks that are built and maintained by an external entity; we are

just “registering” these networks into vCD. What we are doing while filling this

Page 3: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

wizard is essentially telling vCD what layer 3 information to use when VMs will be

connected to this network directly. In particular the IP pool that you need to

configure is a pool of IP addresses that vCD will use to distribute IP addresses (and

related layer 3 info) to VMs connecting to this network. So how do you fill that

pool? You have to turn to the folks that administer that specific network segment

and you need to ask them something like “can you reserve me a set of IP

addresses that no one else will be using on your network and that I can dedicate to

the vApps I will be instantiating on vCD?”. In other words, how would you be able

to instantiate vApps directly onto that network if you don‟t know which IP address

to use? That‟s what that Static IP pool is. This doesn‟t tell the whole story on how VMs get their IPs when deployed. For this you need to be patient. We will get there.

Organization Networks

External Networks are easy. With Organization Networks things start to become

more “interesting”. In the previous section we have created cloud-wide external

connectivity (i.e. External Networks). Now we are zooming inside an Organization.

An Organization (or Org) is a logical construct within vCD that describes a tenant or

a customer. Cloud end-users are defined inside each Organization. Each tenant can

have three type of networks configured as you can depict from the picture below

(you may not immediately get some of the acronyms and colored labels – no

worries – it will be more clear later):

Page 4: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

The first network is called External Organization Network (Direct Connect) and it‟s

the simplest way to connect to the external world through an External Network. In

this case nothing happens at the vSphere layer, this type of Org Network is a

logical construct created inside vCD but doesn‟t really have any counterpart in the

vSphere world: if you connect a vApp to this Org Network, the vNIC gets configured

to connect to the Internet PortGroup (VLAN 233) in the example above. Not a big

deal.

The second network is called External Organization Network (NAT / Routed). This

network really represents a dedicated layer 2 segment that has its own private IP

schema that the Organization can chose arbitrarily (for example 192.168.x.x). This

private network is then routed to the External Network I have chosen to route to.

Note that in this case you are still asked for those layer 3 IP information, however

this time you can create them based on your specific needs because this segment is

private and its layer 3 info are not going to overlap nor to be shared with anything

else anyway. So how is this implemented at the vSphere layer? When you create

such a network a good learning exercise is to switch to the vSphere client interface.

There you will see a number of things happening: first a new PortGroup is deployed

on-the-fly; this is the layer 2 dedicated segment that will support my Org Network.

Consequently a new vShield Edge appliance is automatically deployed by vShield

Page 5: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

Manager. This appliance is effectively the routing device connecting your dedicated

layer 2 network to the External Network (see picture). The Edge device is then

configured with the appropriate layer 3 info you have filled in the wizard when

creating this Organization Network. The Edge license provided with vCD supports

NAT, Firewall and DHCP functionalities to protect and serve this dedicated layer 2

segment. At this point you may wonder how vCD and vSphere can “deploy a new

PortGroup on the fly” to back this dedicated layer 2 network we need to create.

They come from the Network Pools we have briefly mentioned above. When

creating this network in fact the wizard will ask you for the layer 3 private schema

as well as the Network Pool where to grab an available layer 2 network (think of it as an available VLAN for the moment).

The third network that it is possible to created within an Organization is called

Internal Organization Network. As the name implies this network is only available

internally to the Organization. vApps that are deployed to connect to this network

cannot go outside through the External Network. In fact this type of network is

similar to the External Organization Network (NAT / Routed) with the only

exception that it doesn‟t connect to the external world. At this point you may

wonder why there is an Edge deployed onto that PortGroup since there is no need

to do routing. Remember that Edge also provides DHCP service to that segment so

that‟s why Edge is optionally used if the Organization Administrator decides to enable DHCP on that segment (note DHCP is disabled by default).

So, in summary, this is how you can connect your VM vNIC:

Page 6: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

Note that, for simplicity, the picture shows a VM that can connect to different

Organization Networks. Most of the time VMs will have only one vNIC connected to

either one of the Org Networks. However it is possible for a VM to have two or more

vNICs. Also consider that vCD treats everything as a vApp. A single VM is in fact a

vApp with one VM in it. Sometimes you will be using more VMs in a single vApp. Which brings us to the third type of network.

vApp Networks

So far we have seen cloud-wide networks (aka External Networks), Organization-

wise networks (aka Organization Networks) and now we are going to investigate

what we call vApp Networks which are, guess what, networks that are only

available within a single vApp. This is something that you may want to do to either

create and support secure n-tier applications deployments or to fence a vApp to an

Organization Network. Fencing a vApp allows you to instantiate many times the

same vApp onto an Organization Network preserving layer 2 and layer 3

information. In a way, fencing is a shortcut given to end-users in the vCD user

Page 7: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

interface to achieve transparently this cloning operation. From a vSphere

perspective creating a vApp Network explicitly or taking the “fence shortcut” in the

UI translates into the deployment of Edge devices as well as separate layer 2

networks from a vCD pre-defined Network Pool. Note I am oversimplifying a matter

that is more complex than what I am trying to picture. That‟s because, right now, I

am focusing more on what happens at the vSphere layer rather than focusing on the different end-user options vApp Networks and Fenced vApps have to offer.

While the configuration wizards may seem to be slightly different, note that the

relationship between vApp Networks and Organization Networks is somewhat

similar compared to the relationship between Organization Networks and External

Networks. By this I mean that vApp Networks can connect directly to an Org

Network (in which case the VM connects to the Organization Network PortGroup),

the vApp Network can connect using NAT technologies to the Org Network (in which

case a new layer 2 network is being deployed from a specified Network Pool and a

new Edge is instantiated to connect to the Organization Network) or the vApp

Network can be left isolated from the rest of the world (in which case a new layer 2

network is being deployed from a specified Network Pool and a new Edge is

instantiated only if DHCP gets enabled). This sounds familiar if you think at the

different Organization Network options. As a matter of fact we are effectively

creating a similar stack at the vApp level and we could then plug this stack on top of the other stacks we created at the Org level. You remember the onion?

The picture below shows a VM that connects to a vApp Network where DHCP was

enabled (note the presence of the Edge device):

Page 8: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

This picture below, on the other hand, shows a VM connected to a vApp Network

with external connectivity. Don‟t be confused by this picture: an Edge can

Route/NAT to one and only one network at any point in time. In fact the Edge

system vm always have a maximum of two vNICs: one that connects to the

network to be protected and the other one connected to the network it needs to

route/NAT too. The picture below shows all the possible configurations for the

second Edge vNIC: External Org Net (Direct Connect), External Org Net

(NAT/Routed) and Internal Org Net. Again: only one of these three connections can

be active at any point in time. Note how a VM can be potentially NATted twice if

connected to a NATted vApp Networks which in turns connect to a NATted

Organization Network.

Page 9: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

It may be interesting to call out that there are a few philosophical differences

between how you create, configure and deploy vApp Networks compared to

Organization Networks. Org Networks are created by the cloud administrator (on

behalf of the Organization administrator) and when the cloud admin starts the

creation process the wizard asks interactively for “which Network Pool to use to

grab an available layer 2 segment”. We do not want to expose that question to the

end-user when he/she creates a vApp Network. After all this end-user may not

even have a clue what a Network Pool is and perhaps it may not even know what a

layer 2 network is. To overcome this we associate a network pool to the

Organization vDC. In this case when a user creates a vApp Network a layer 2

network is grabbed from the Network Pool associated to the Organization vDC the

user is deploying the vApp to. This also comes handy to keep control and keep

track of layer 2 network usage. When you associated a Network Pool to an

Organization vDC you can set a limit on the number of segments any user in that

organization can grab. In fact if you associate a Network Pool with 100 networks in

it, you don‟t want someone creating 100 vApp Networks in half a day and consume

the entire Network Pool immediately. This is helpful to set limits on what an Organization can do (and possibly charge accordingly).

I am not going to cover use cases of where and how to use combinations of vApp

and Org Networks to create secure deployments because in this post I wanted to

give you more the sense of what happens from a vSphere and cloud administrator

perspective rather than from a cloud end-user perspective.

Page 10: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

Network Pools

At this point you may have an overall understanding of what a Network Pool is and

why it is used. In summary it is a small CMDB that contains layer 2 segments

available to vCD administrators and end-users. Note Network Pools need to be

created before we start deploying the actual networks we have described above

(with the exception of the External Networks because they don‟t use Networks

Pools).

So far we kept referring to a “layer 2 segment” as a PortGroup with an associated

VLAN id. This is correct but it doesn‟t tell the whole story. There are really three different type of Network Pools one can create.

VLAN-backed Network Pools: this is the easiest to get. You can, for example, create

a Network Pool and give it a range of VLAN ID 100 to 199. Whenever you grab one

of these IDs because you need to deploy a new layer 2 segment, vCD will tell

vCenter “please create on the fly a PortGroup, and give it VLAN ID 100″. The next

time there is a need for another layer 2 segment vCD will tell vCenter “please

create on the fly a PortGroup, and give it VLAN ID 101″. And so on. Of course if one

of these networks is destroyed during the lifecycle of the cloud, the corresponding

VLAN ID gets put back into the pool of available networks to be deployed.

PortGroup-backed Network Pools: it is similar to the VLAN-backed. The difference is

that the PortGroups need to be pre-provisioned on the vSphere infrastructure and

they need to be imported into vCloud Director. So vCD won‟t tell vCenter to create

these on the fly, they are already there pre-provisioned. Why using this? Well there

are some circumstances where vCenter cannot easily (programmatically) create

PortGroups on the fly. This is the case when you use vSphere Standard Switches

(as opposed to Distributed Switches) or when you use the Nexus 1000v (at the moment vCD cannot manipulate programmatically Port Profiles).

vCloud Director Network Isolation Network Pools: This is when things start to get

interesting (again). We use a technique called Mac-in-Mac to create layer 2

separated networks without using VLANs. Yeah that‟s right. This is extremely useful

for big environments where VLAN management is problematic, either because there

is a limited number of VLANs available or because keeping track of VLANs is a big

management overhead (especially if you use an excel spreadsheet to do that ).

When you create such a Network Pool you only specify how many of these layer 2

networks you want this Network Pool to have and you are done. When vCD starts

to deploy PortGroups from this Network Pool you won‟t see any VLAN associated to

them but they are indeed different layer 2 segments.

Now the acronym VCD-NI and the labels Preprovisioned and Created-on-the-fly in

the pictures above should make more sense to you. Try to go back and have a look at them again.

Virtual Machines IP management

First of all note you cannot connect a vNIC to an External Network directly. You can

however connect the vNIC to either an Organization Network or a vApp Network.

Now the question is: what happens when you connect a vNIC to either an

Organization Network or a vApp Network? How do you control the layer 3 behavior?

As we said, you have a choice of connecting each vNIC of the VM to an

Organization Network, a vApp Network or leave the vNIC not connected. In the

example below I have connected it to a vApp Network as you can depict from the

name (vAppInternal). If you chose to connect it to a network you have three choices on how to get an IP. See the “IP Mode” drop-down in the picture:

Page 11: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

Static IP Pool: this is the pool of IP addresses that you have configured when you

created the network you are connecting to. This is the private IP Pool range you

had to configure when creating a vApp Network, an External Organization Network

Routed/NAT or an Internal Organization Network. In case of an External

Organization Network Direct Connect the IP Pool range configured when creating

the External Network it connects to will be used. It is important to understand that

from a VM perspective this is considered a Static IP Address, it only happens to

come from a pool that vCD controls. The first IP available in the Static IP Pool gets “plugged” into the VM (as a static address) at Guest Customization time.

DHCP: I guess this is self-explanatory. In that case the vNIC will search for a DHCP

lease on the network it connects to. If it‟s a vApp Network, an External

Organization Network Routed/NAT or an Internal Organization Network, this will

have to come from the Edge DHCP service. If it‟s an External Organization Network

Direct Connect it will have to be a DHCP that is available on that PortGroup

associated to the External Network (in which case this would be out of the scope of vCloud Director).

Static Manual: This is used in those situations where you do not want or cannot use

either one of the two above. You have to manually enter the IP address into the

vCD interface and make sure it is the same you have entered into the Guest OS of

the VM you are working on. It goes without saying that this manual IP address

cannot fall into the same range of the DHCP scope nor the Static IP Pool if you want to avoid potential IP conflicts.

Conclusions

In conclusion I hope I managed to give you a different perspective on how vCD

networking works and especially the logic behind it. I covered the three main

network layers and I have then focused a bit on the concept of the Network Pools

and how Virtual Machines can be configured to connect to the available networks

inside the Organization (including vApp Networks). Remember that complexity, in

this case, is directly proportional to the richness of configurations and options

available to the cloud end-user to consume “self-service”.

Massimo.

UNCATEGORIZED

« vCloud Director: Catalog Experiments

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23 comments to vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

Diagram: VMware vCloud Director Networking Architecture |

HYPERVIZOR

September 14, 2010 at 6:13 PM · Reply

Page 12: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

[...] The networking part of the presentation I‟ve mentioned above has been re-

written by the master at this link. Another MUST-READ. Posted in Diagrams, vCloud Director | Tags: diagrams, vCloud Director, [...]

Naresh

September 16, 2010 at 12:52 PM · Reply

your presentation is great and detailed. I was trying to setup the cloud and i am

stuck at a point where i am not able to allocate network pool to a Organization vDC, even though there are networks available in the Network Pools at the cloud level.

On the screen in the Org vDC propertiesm where you can select network pool, it is none and doesn‟t list the networks that were created at the cloud level.

Any help is appreciated.

o Massimo

September 17, 2010 at 9:37 AM · Reply

Hi Naresh. The only thing I can think of is that you created Network Pools off a

vDS that is not available in the cluster where your Oragnization vDC (hence the

Provider vDC) originates from. This may be the case if you have two vCenter

servers driving different clusters and you created a Network Pools leveraging a

switch on the first vCenter but the RP backing the Org vDC comes from a

different vCenter. HTH. Massimo.

sanjai September 17, 2010 at 9:27 AM · Reply

Thanks for your effort in explaining the vCD Network concepts.

I still can not differentiate between Static IP Pool and DHCP as both looks same in Virtual Machines IP management.

Please shed some light …

o Massimo

September 17, 2010 at 9:44 AM · Reply

Hi Sanjai. From a VM IP stack perspective using an IP from the static IP Pool

turns into a static IP address at the VM level (vCD will chose it from the Pool).

If you select DHCP you are basically setting the VM to get a dynamic address

on the Network. If the vNIC connects to an External Org Network (Direct

Connect) the DHCP service needs to be available on the External Network.

If the vNIC connect to an External Org Network (NAT/Routed) or to an

Internal Org Network then you need to turn on the DHCP service at the

Edge device (or have a DHCP server on the same network as a vApp for that

matter).

Page 13: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

HTH. Massimo.

sanjai March 18, 2011 at 11:12 AM · Reply

Yes it did helped to understand the underlying concept. Unfortunately, i

took a very long time to reply hope you don‟t mind.

Sanjai

Naresh

September 17, 2010 at 2:16 PM · Reply

Thanks Massimo , You helped me think differently and could resolve the issue and

proceed further. I didn‟t had two vcenter server but i had to reconfigure my

Vsphere environemnt and create a new cluster. I think the issue was that the

resources were not available to all the ESX hosts. Any way thanks for the help i

have to overcome some more issues in setting this monster up

Brad Hedlund

September 24, 2010 at 10:48 PM · Reply

Great post Massimo! Your style is perfect for spoon feeding. I came back several

times. I have a pretty good understanding of vCD networking now, thanks to you.

Cheers, Brad

A Collection of vCloud Director Links - blog.scottlowe.org - The

weblog of an IT pro specializing in virtualization, storage, and servers

September 29, 2010 at 3:57 PM · Reply

[...] – Networking part 1 – Intro Creating a VMware vCloud Director Cluster vCloud

Director Architecture vCloud Director Networking for Dummies Automating vCloud Director and Oracle DB [...]

Eric

September 30, 2010 at 7:48 PM · Reply

Hi all

I‟m a vShield beginner and I need some help.

For 2 given customers using an overlapping IP subnet to assign their VMs, is it

possible to configure 2 Vshield zones based on the same IP Subnet via VShield

Manager ?

Page 14: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

How is the isolation performed between the 2 customers.

Best Regards.

Eric

o Massimo

October 1, 2010 at 9:31 AM · Reply

Eric,

this is not supported today. vShield Zones/App wouldn‟t work with overlapping

IP schemas across different tenants. This is something we are looking at for future versions.

Massimo.

Want to know more about vCloud Director? « Trent Steele's Blog

October 6, 2010 at 8:27 PM · Reply

[...] Networking part 1 – IntroCreating a VMware vCloud Director ClustervCloud

Director ArchitecturevCloud Director Networking for DummiesAutomating vCloud Director and Oracle DB InstallationDiagram: The VMware vCloud Director Cell [...]

wrong- sorry

November 20, 2010 at 9:54 PM · Reply

this is all very wrong sorry , there is no single „edge‟ device like in your pictures,

vshield-edge device (VM) is created for every port-group that use it , meaning

multiple „edge‟ devices for the same ORG (per port-group) , also „isolated‟ to define

VCDNI is wrong , look for lab-manager encapsulation to see why it can not be

isolated. „internal networks‟ are not internal at all , they are exactly the same as

„external direct‟ , just a vlan on a portgroup sent to external switch when moving

between ESX servers. you are making it difficult when it is actually very clear

o Massimo

November 22, 2010 at 12:41 PM · Reply

I have approved the above comment but to be honest I am not sure whether

it‟s spam or what. I am not sure what you are talking about. Who ever said you

can only have a “single” edge per Org? Also “Isolated” may have different

meanings to a lot of different people. For someone not even a dedicated port

on a shared switch is “isolated” (go figure VLANs or MAC-in-Mac). I am glad it‟s

so “clear” in your mind… however stating that an Internal network and External Direct networks are exactly the same… makes me wonder…

Massimo.

wrong- sorry

November 20, 2010 at 9:57 PM · Reply

Page 15: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

also – when you use vshiled edge in vcloud , you are forced to NAT your servers ,

VSE is NOT a router, so all NAT caveat apply here.

also – VSE as a FW ? it is not even certified as a fire-wall so why call it so ? look for

the capabilities of VSE, compare it to a 50$ cheep FW and tell who is better in

terms of functionality and features

o Massimo

November 22, 2010 at 12:50 PM · Reply

The features will improve for sure down the road but the value is not in the

features themselves. It‟s rather in the integration of all of them

(CPU/MEMORY/DISK/NETWORK) into something that an end-user can easily

consume from a portal or from an API. Perhaps your 50$ supermarket firewall

will have more features than the Edge today … but it doesn‟t fit into the picture above.

Massimo.

covertp

April 24, 2011 at 5:43 AM · Reply

As an example of the information that you will need to fill out for an “External

Network”–is this public IP info given to you by your ISP?

o Massimo

April 27, 2011 at 4:22 PM · Reply

It depends on the context. If you are an Enterprise deploying a Private Cloud

and you want to give your Orgs access to the Internet (via the Edge security

gateway) then yes those would be the public IPs your internet provider gave

you (unless you have some sort of additional NATting at the perimiter of your

physical network in which case it would be the NATted addresses that your

perimeter physical device is exposing internally). Note that the External

Network could also be an internal company-wide backbone where you want to

attach Orgs and keep them protected (from other internal workloads) via the same Edge device.

Alex

May 27, 2011 at 4:53 AM · Reply

Hi, very helpful article. I still have a question about the network pools. Am I to

assume that for any of the 3 types, the physical network switches on the network need to be configured for the relevant VLANs?

I have tried both VLAN backed, and Cloud Isolated pools, and as soon as I put 2 VMs in the same org network on different ESX hosts, I lose connectivity…

Page 16: vCloud Director Networking for Dummies

o Massimo

May 27, 2011 at 8:08 AM · Reply

Alex, for the VLAN backed and the PG-backed yes the VLANs need to be

defined/preprovisioned on the switch ports (basically you need to create a

trunk). For the VCD-NI pool it depends if you specify a VLAN ID for the pool. If

you do, then yes that VLAN need to be defined on the ports.

Hope this helps.

Massimo.

Alex

May 30, 2011 at 8:01 AM · Reply

Hi Massimo,

Thanks for your response, that‟s very helpful. I‟m still having connectivity

problems, but I can‟t tell whether it‟s just me misunderstanding the product. I have

a VCD-NI pool configured for 50 networks, without a VLAN ID configured. The port

group gets created on the dvswitch, but VMs on that internal org network cannot

see each other unless they are residing on the same ESX host. Do I need a VLAN

configured so that the port group on the dvswitch can be shared amongst the ESX hosts?

Thanks!

Boris

June 23, 2011 at 3:44 PM · Reply

Wow, thanks a lot!

Helped me understand the inner workings a bit more.

Thanks you!

What about some post about how to set up properly organizations from scratch

(including all the PortGroup and Network Pool configured)? It would be really helpful, I suppose.

Thanks a lot!

o Massimo

June 23, 2011 at 4:57 PM · Reply

See this (and the previous “parts” linked in it): http://www.yellow-

bricks.com/2010/10/06/vcd-%E2%80%93-networking-part-3-

%E2%80%93-use-case-2/