This is the one of the most exciting times to be working in networking. New technologies and fresh takes on existing problems are keeping everyone on their toes when it comes to learning new protocols and integration systems. VMworld 2013 served both as an annoucement of VMware’s formal entry into the larger networking world as well as putting existing network vendors on notice. What follows is my take on some of these announcements. I’m sure that some aren’t going to like what I say. I’m even more sure a few will debate my points vehemently. All I ask is that you consider my position as we go forward.

Captain Over, Captain Under

VMware, through their Nicira acquisition and development, is now *the* vendor to go to when you want to build an overlay network. Their technology augments existing deployments to provide software features such as load balancing and policy deployment. In order to do this and ensure that these features are utilized, VMware uses VxLAN tunnels between the devices. VMware calls these constructs “virtual wires”. I’m going to call them vWires, since they’ll likely be called that soon anyway. vWires are deployed between hosts to provide a pathway for communications. Think of it like a GRE tunnel or a VPN tunnel between the hosts. This means the traffic rides on the existing physical network but that network has no real visibility into the payload of the transit packets.

Nicira’s brainchild, NSX, has the ability to function as a layer 2 switch and a layer 3 router as well as a load balancer and a firewall. VMware is integrating many existing technologies with NSX to provide consistency when provisioning and deploying a new sofware-based network. For those devices that can’t be virtualized, VMware is working with HP, Brocade, and Arista to provide NSX agents that can decapsulate the traffic and send it to an physical endpoint that can’t participate in NSX (yet). As of the launch during the keynote, most major networking vendors are participating with NSX. There’s one major exception, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

NSX is a good product. VMware wouldn’t have released it otherwise. It is the vSwitch we’ve needed for a very long time. It also extends the ability of the virtualization/server admin to provision resources quickly. That’s where I’m having my issue with the messaging around NSX. During the second day keynote, the CTOs on stage said that the biggest impediment to application deployment is waiting on the network to be configured. Note that is my paraphrasing of what I took their intent to be. In order to work around the lag in network provisioning, VMware has decided to build a VxLAN/GRE/STT tunnel between the endpoints and eliminate the network admin as a source of delay. NSX turns your network in a fabric for the endpoints connected to it.

Under the Bridge

I also have some issues with NSX and the way it’s supposed to work on existing networks. Network engineers have spent countless hours optimizing paths and reducing delay and jitter to provide applications and servers with the best possible network. Now, that all doesn’t matter. vAdmins just have to click a couple of times and build their vWire to the other server and all that work on the network is for naught. The underlay network exists to provide VxLAN transport. NSX assumes that everything working beneath is running optimally. No loops, no blocked links. NSX doesn’t even participate in spanning tree. Why should it? After all, that vWire ensures that all the traffic ends up in the right location, right? People would never bridge the networking cards on a host server. Like building a VPN server, for instance. All of the things that network admins and engineers think about in regards to keeping the network from blowing up due to excess traffic are handwaved away in the presentations I’ve seen.

The reference architecture for NSX looks pretty. Prettier than any real network I’ve ever seen. I’m afraid that suboptimal networks are going to impact application and server performance now more than ever. And instead of the network using mechanisms like QoS to battle issues, those packets are now invisible bulk traffic. When network folks have no visibility into the content of the network, they can’t help when performance suffers. Who do you think is going to get blamed when that goes on? Right now, it’s the network’s fault when things don’t run right. Do you think that moving the onus for server network provisioning to NSX and vCenter is going to forgive the network people when things go south? Or are the underlay engineers going to be take the brunt of the yelling because they are the only ones that still understand the black magic outside the GUI drag-and-drop to create vWires?

NSX is for service enablement. It allows people to build network components without knowing the CLI. It also means that network admins are going to have to work twice as hard to build resilient networks that work at high speed. I’m hoping that means that TRILL-based fabrics are going to take off. Why use spanning tree now? Your application and service network sure isn’t. No sense adding any more bells and whistles to your switches. It’s better to just tie them into spine-and-leaf CLOS fabrics and be done with it. It now becomes much more important to concentrate on the user experience. Or maybe the wirless network. As long as at least one link exists between your ESX box and the edge switch let the new software networking guys worry about it.

The Recumbent Incumbent?

Cisco is the only major networking manufacturer not publicly on board with NSX right now. Their CTO Padma Warrior has released a response to NSX that talks about lock-in and vertical integration. Still others have released responses to that response. There’s a lot of talk right now about the war brewing between Cisco and VMware and what that means for VCE. One thing is for sure – the landscape has changed. I’m not sure how this is going to fall out on both sides. Cisco isn’t likely to stop selling switches any time soon. NSX still works just fine with Cisco as an underlay. VCE is still going to make a whole bunch of money selling vBlocks in the next few months. Where this becomes a friction point is in the future.

Cisco has been building APIs into their software for the last year. They want to be able to use those APIs to directly program the network through devices like the forthcoming OpenDaylight controller. Will they allow NSX to program them as well? I’m sure they would – if VMware wrote those instructions into NSX. Will VMware demand that Cisco use the NSX-approved APIs and agents to expose network functionality to their software network? They could. Will Cisco scrap OnePK to implement NSX? I doubt that very much. We’re left with a standoff. Cisco wants VMware to use their tools to program Cisco networks. VMware wants Cisco to use the same tools as everyone else and make the network a commodity compared to the way it is now.

Let’s think about that last part for a moment. Aside from some speed differences, networks are largely going to be identical to NSX. It won’t care if you’re running HP, Brocade, or Cisco. Transport is transport. Someone down the road may build some proprietary features into their hardware to make NSX run better but that day is far off. What if a manufacturer builds a switch that is twice as fast as the nearest competition? Three times? Ten times? At what point does the underlay become so important that the overlay starts preferring it exclusively?

Tom’s Take

I said a lot during the Tuesday keynote at VMworld. Some of it was rather snarky. I asked about full BGP tables and vMotioning the machines onto the new NSX network. I asked because I tend to obsess over details. Forgotten details have broken more of my networks than grand design disasters. We tend to fuss over the big things. We make more out of someone that can drive a golf ball hundreds of yards than we do about the one that can consistently sink a ten foot putt. I know that a lot of folks were pre-briefed on NSX. I wasn’t, so I’m playing catch up right now. I need to see it work in production to understand what value it brings to me. One thing is for sure – VMware needs to change the messaging around NSX to be less antagonistic towards network folks. Bring us into your solution. Let us use our years of experience to help rather than making us seem like pariahs responsible for all your application woes. Let us help you help everyone.