Virtual Stack

eBPF is one of the most interesting emerging technologies in the area of observability, networking and security. On the 44th episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast, Moustafa Harbi (Sr. Technical Account Manager at Red Hat) and I have a chat about this technology and its use cases in today's enterprise IT industry.   Show Notes: 00:00 - Intros 01:30 - What's eBPF in a nutshell? 06:40 - What can eBPF offer us? 12:30 - In what language or on what framework do we write eBPF code? 14:20 - What are the use cases of eBPF in an enterprise setting? 21:30 - Do eBPF programs create any load on system CPU or memory? 23:00 - How do we use eBPF on an enterprise-wide scale? 24:45 - What's Cilium and what's its relationship with eBPF? 30:30 - What do you think about the future of eBPF and Cilium? Can they change the way we do networking? 35:00 - How can we start learning about eBPF? 39:00 - Closing notes   Links: eBPF project Cilium project BCC (BPF Compiler Collection) GitHub page

On the 43rd episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Sean Cavanaugh (Senior Principal Technical Marketing Manager - Ansible Automation Platform, at Red Hat) and we discuss all things network automation. If you'd like to hear about main use cases, common obstacles and the solution you need (spoiler alert: Ansible :)), this episode is for you.   Show notes: 01:00 - Intros 07:30 - Some of the biggest changes in networking in the last few years 18:30 - Main use cases for network automation 31:00 - Key benefits of Ansible 36:00 - Common obstacles on the journey to automation 41:30 - Closing notes Links: Red Hat Ansible Automation YouTube Channel Ansible Automation Platform Self-Paced Labs Sean's Twitter

On the 42th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Gil Hoffer (co-founder & CTO at Salto) and we discuss about their solution of automating the configuration of SaaS applications, which they describe as company-as-code.   Can we manage and operate our business applications the same way as our CI/CD pipelines and IT infrastructure? Answers are on this episode.   Show notes: Intros: 00:00 What's Salto? 01:30 What can be automated by Salto on some typical applications? 06:00 How do you make sure Salto works with many SaaS applications and keep up with their changes? 14:00 What made you design an automation language instead of using something like YAML or XML? 17:15 What types of companies benefit from the company-as-code approach? 19:55 Who are the main buyers? What business benefits do they get? 22:10 What are the main obstacles that organisations encounter when adopting company-as-code? 26:10 How can customers test the solution? 32:30 Closing notes: 34:30 Links: Salto: Company-as-Code - Blog article on Salto.io Salto on GitHub  Gil on Twitter

On the 41st episode, Nick Barcet (Sr. Director Technology Strategy, Office of the CTO at Red Hat) joins me on the show we talk about MicroShift, an open source project of optimizing OpenShift for edge/small form factor use cases. We also talk about how Red Hat looks into emerging technology projects. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Links: Nick's twitter MicroShift MicroShift blog post Red Hat Emerging Technologies portal

Virtual Stack Podcast is back after a 10 months long hiatus! On the 40th episode of the show, I'm joined by a fellow Red Hatter and the co-host of the The Cloudcast, Brian Gracely. With Brian, we look into several technology trends such as cloud computing, web3, security then we discuss what to expect in 2022 and beyond. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Show notes: 1:30: Intros 6:00: Cloud computing 20:30: web3 and Metaverse 27:45: Security 33:15: Tech investors and VC funding 39:45: Future of work and great resignation. 47:30: Closing notes   Links: Brian's twitter. The Cloudcast: Web, Twitter.

Chris Love and Jay Vyas's book "Core Kubernetes" is about to hit the shelves around July this year via Manning Publications. Chris joined me on the 39th episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast and we discussed about all things Kubernetes: learning, common challenges of running in production and the exciting future of K8S. I have free eBook codes for this book and you’ll get one if you’re one of the first 5 people to share my LinkedIn and Twitter posts with your network. Besides that, you can use the code “podstack20” for a 40% discount on all Manning Publications products (use this link).   Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Links: Core Kubernetes Twitter: Chris, Jay Lionkube

Learning Kubernetes can be a great boost for your career, and you might be wondering where to start and what resources to use. Elton Stoneman joined me on the 38th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast and talked about his new book "Learn Kubernetes in a Month of Lunches", his journey of learning K8S and his views about the future of K8S.   I have free eBook codes for this book and you’ll get one if you’re one of the first 5 people to share my LinkedIn and Twitter posts with your network. Besides that, you can use the code “podstack20” for a 40% discount on all Manning Publications products.   Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Links: Learn Kubernetes in a Month of Lunches  Twitter Elton's Blog Elton's Pluralsight profile Show notes: 02:00 - Intro about the book and Elton's background 08:45 - How does the approach for learning K8S change for different personas, e.g. infra teams, dev teams, security teams? 15:15 - How would you learn K8S if you were to start from scratch today? 22:45 - How do you see the adoption trends and future of K8S? 27:00 - In the future, are we still going to need to learn how K8S works under the hood, or will we just use  it as a service 32:00 - Closing notes

Virtual Stack Podcast is back after a long break! On the 37th episode of the show, I'm joined by the authors of the book "AI as a Service", Peter Elger (CEO, fourTheorem) and Eoin Shanaghy (CTO, fourTheorem).   No need to mention the importance of the role that AI/ML play in digital transformation. With the incredible speed of evolution of cloud computing, it's now much easier to adopt cloud-based solutions rather than building everything by yourself. Peter and Eoin's book explain the AI as a Service with real world examples.   I have free eBook codes for this book and you’ll get one if you’re one of the first 5 people to share my LinkedIn and Twitter posts with your network. Besides that, you can use the code “podstack20” for a 40% discount on all Manning Publications products.   Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Show Notes: 02:00 - Intro 08:30 - Current cloud landscape and definition of AI/ML and Serverless 17:30 - Who can benefit the most from reading the book? 19:45 - What are the main use cases for AIaaS and which industries can benefit the most? 21:30 - When do you recommend using AIaaS versus DIY, or vice versa? 27:00 - How would you build a web application using AIaaS and Serverless technologies? What are the architectural building blocks and public cloud services? 36:00 - How can we be more effective and efficient while using AIaaS? 41:00 - Recommendations for further learning and closing notes Links: Peter and Eoin's book: "AI as a Service" Peter's Twitter Eoin's Twitter SLIC Starter: A complete starter project from fourTheorem for production-grade serverless applications on AWS.

vSphere Bitfusion delivers elastic infrastructure for AI/ML workloads by creating pools of hardware accelerator resources, such as GPUs. VMware has acquired Bitfusion in late-2019 and it has been recently announced that Bitfusion will be an integrated feature of vSphere 7.0. On the 36th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Mike Adams (Sr. Director Cloud Platform Product Marketing at VMware) and we discuss about vSphere Bitfusion, its technology and use cases. You can reach out to Mike on Twitter and LinkedIn, and you can learn more about vSphere Bitfusion via AskBitfusion@vmware.com mailer.  Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 01:00 - Intro 02:00 - Intro to Bitfusion and their technology 05:30 - Relationship between GPU technology and AI/ML applications 08:30 - How can we use Bitfusion, is it now a part of vSphere? How’s pricing and packaging? 12:30 - The architecture and components of the solution 15:00 - What’s CUDA and what’s its relationship with Bitfusion technology? 19:15 - What about Kubernetes workloads and Bitfusion? 21:45 - What are some of the use cases/verticals that can benefit from Bitfusion technology?  30:15 - Usage of FPGA and custom ASICs with Bitfusion. 32:30 - Closing notes Links: Hardware Acceleration with vSphere Bitfusion Announcing vSphere Bitfusion – Elastic Infrastructure for AI/ML Workloads VMware Blogs on AI/ML VMware’s AI/ML direction and Hardware Acceleration with vSphere Bitfusion VMware Kubernetes Integration with Bitfusion  

On the 35th episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by David Burton (Director, Colleague Experience & Technology - EMEA at VMware) and we discuss about how VMware uses its own technologies to create the best employee experience. We also touch base on the new definition of workplace in enterprises after the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show notes: 01:00 - Intro 02:00 - What’s employee experience, why does it matter? 05:30 - What sets the difference between companies that can and cannot identify customer needs and set the right experience. What are they doing right or wrong? 08:45 - How did VMware define the colleague expectations in different areas, like, on boarding, remote working, learning and development? 11:20 - How will the pandemic will effect the employee experience going forward? 20:30 - What’s the technology stack used in VMware’s employee experience solution. 24:30 - Closing notes

Virtual Stack podcast is back with its 34th episode! On this episode, I'm joined by Martijn Smit (Sr. Technical Marketing Architect at VMware) and we dive into the newest features of vRealize Network Insight, such as flow-based app discovery, support for VeloCloud SD-WAN, AWS, Azure and more. Martijn's book, "vRealize Network Insight Cookbook" will be available very soon. You can follow his website networkinsightbook.com to get notified once it's out there. Besides that, you can follow Martijn on Twitter (@smitmartijn). Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

On the 33rd episode of Virtual Stack, I’m joined by Dylan Shields (Software Engineer at Google) and we talk about his upcoming book called AWS Security. In our discussion, we touch on many points; such as the security governance on public clouds, security services on AWS, best practices for networking/VPC, IAM and continuous monitoring.   Dylan’s book will be published by Manning Publications in Autumn 2020. I have free eBook codes for this book and you’ll get one if you’re one of the first 5 people to share my LinkedIn and Twitter posts with your network.   Besides that, you can use the code “podstack20” for a 40% discount on all Manning Publications products.   Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Links: Dylan's book: "AWS Security" AWS Well Architected Framework Whitepapers AWS Security Blog

On the 32nd episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Kenneth Reilly (CTO at LevelUP) and we talk about Low-Code Development. Low-Code (often referred to as No-Code) development platforms provide an environment where programmers create their application software through graphical user interfaces and configuration instead of traditional computer programming. While this brings many benefits, especially speed and agility in prototyping and enabling a broader range of users with software development skills, some developers question if low-code is fit for large-scale or mission critical applications. You can reach out to Kenneth on LinkedIn, Twitter and Medium.  Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Links: What is Low-Code Development? - Kenneth's Medium article on Low-Code. Low-Code Development Platform - Wikipedia LevelUP - Company website

Digital Workspace is increasingly becoming a strategic IT priority for enterprises, since it's directly related to employee experience and productivity. On the other hand, security and privacy are becoming even more important in parallel with BYOD and mobile working. On the 31st episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Adam Matthews, Digital Workspace Solution Engineer at VMware, and we discuss about Digital Workspace, employee experience and VMware's Workspace ONE solution. You can reach out to Adam and follow his work on Twitter (@AdamPMatthews) and his blog. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Links:  VMware TestDrive: https://www.vmwdemo.com/ https://whatisworkspaceone.com/ https://techzone.vmware.com/ https://blog.eucse.com/author/matthewsa/

Back in August 2019, Pat Gelsinger and Joe Beda were on stage at VMworld US to announce VMware Tanzu and Project Pacific, the products and solutions that are designed to change the way customers build, run and manage their Kubernetes based applications. On the 30th episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast, I’m joined by Scott Lowe (Staff Kubernetes Architect at VMware, author, blogger and fellow podcaster) and we discuss about these recent announcements and check under the hood. Hope you enjoy the show. You can reach out to Scott and follow his work on his blog and Twitter. Scott hosts a popular podcast called Full Stack Journey and he’s also contributing to the KubeAcademy initiative. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Links: Live announcement at VMworld US (33:00 - 43:00) Project Pacific product page VMware Tanzu product page Scott's author profile; the books that he authored and co-authored

Finding the perfect balance between work and life has always been a trouble, especially for those in the IT sector. IT and many other industries adore productivity, tie your work output to your salary and even your professional status. In the race of maintaining a good work output, we occasionally forget having interests outside of work, our families, relationships and hobbies, and this work-life imbalance often ends up with anxiety, stress, and even depression and burn-out.   Joining me on the 29th episode of the podcast today is Amy Lewis (Director of NSX Product Marketing at VMware) and we talk about work-life balance in IT sector. Why it’s so challenging to maintain it, what causes the imbalance and what are some tips, tricks and life-hacks that we can apply in our lives to maintain a healthy balance work and life.   You can reach out to Amy via Twitter (@CommsNinja) and LinkedIn. She will be launching a new podcast with a group of four called Nerd Herd, so stay tuned for that.    Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.   Hope you enjoy the show. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Links: Cal Newport - Digital Minimalism OECD Better Life Index The State of Work Life Balance in 2019: What we learned from studying 185 million hours of working time Finding work life balance: Tips, techniques, and exercises for a more balanced life The Illusion of Multitasking Boosts Performance Best Places to Work 2020 - Employees Choice Cities for the Best Work-Life Balance 2019 Eisenhower Matrix

Analytics in the data centre can be challenge since many solutions tend to send extensive packet data and telemetry to disparate centralised engines, which can increase cost and complexity. NSX Intelligence is a new solution that has been announced with NSX-T 2.5 and it’s designed to remediate this challenge. It is a distributed analytics engine that provides detailed application topology visualisation, automated security policy recommendations, continuous monitoring of every flow, and an audit trail of security policies. On the 28th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I’m joined by Dumlu Timuralp (NSX Lead Solution Engineer at VMware) and we talk about the new features announced on NSX-T 2.5, especially NSX Intelligence. You can reach out to Dumlu via LinkedIn and Twitter, and follow his work via Medium and Github. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. Hope you enjoy the show. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 02:30 Intro 04:30 NSX Intelligence 20:45 New Security features on NSX-T 2.5 28:45 NSX Cloud enhancements 35:00 Closing notes Links: NSX-T Data Center 2.5 Release Notes  Using NSX Intelligence (NSX-T 2.5 Admin Guide) VMware Blogs - NSX-T 2.5 – A New Marker on the Innovation Timeline VMware Compatibility Guide (NSX-T) NSX-T 2.5 Layer 7 App-IDs VMworld 2019 session - Using VMware NSX Policy and Analytics to Address Key Challenges in Security (SAI3071BE)

On the 27th episode of the show, I’m joined by Stijn Vanveerdeghem, Senior Technical Product Manager at VMware.    Distributed IPS/IDS (Intrusion Prevention and Detection System) on NSX-T was one of the biggest announcements at VMworld 2019 Europe. Stijn is the Technical Product Manager behind this feature and he took the time to explain us what VMware is bringing to the security market and what are the distinctive benefits that customers can gain from using this feature.   You can reach out to Stijn via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stijnvanv/).    Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. Hope you enjoy the show. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Show notes: 02:00 - Intro 04:45 - What did VMware announce in VMworld 2019 Europe? 07:50 - What is IPS/IDS and what is the difference between IDS/IPS and a Firewall and NGFW (Next-gen FW) 15:00 - Can you talk about the use cases for Distributed IDS? 21:00 - What additional benefits does VMware bring to the customer? 29:15 - Can you tell us a bit more about the Architecture? 35:30 - What are the NSX-T IPS/IDS signatures based on? 37:15 - What about the general availability? 38:30 - Closing notes Links: VMworld 2019 Europe session: What's New with NSX-T Micro-Segmentation (SAI2565BE)(IPS/IDS is covered at the end) Official Product Page  VMware Blog about the feature announcement 

On the 26th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Kelly Goolsby, Director of Enterprise Sales and Solution Architecture at Liquid Web and we talk about a variety of topics; cloud computing, hybrid-clouds, migrating to cloud and Liquid Web's services in this domain.  Liquid Web is a company focusing on managed hosting as well as managed VMware Private Clouds, and Kelly has a lot of experience with cloud use cases, cloud TCO and migration to cloud. You can reach out to Kelly via Twitter (@kgool) and LinkedIn. Liquid Web's website is https://www.liquidweb.com.   Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.   Hope you enjoy the show. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Show Notes: 04:30 - What trends do you see in cloud market today? 08:30 - Top 3 benefits of moving to cloud 12:00 - What are the main cloud use cases? 16:15 - What does Liquid Web do? 19:15 - What are the cost/TCO differences between hosted cloud and DIY private cloud? 23:00 - How do you migrate your on-prem workload to a hosted cloud solution? 26:30 - Any case studies of customers moving to cloud? 30:30 - Closing notes

On the 25th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I'm joined by Martijn Baecke, Cloud Management Technologist at VMware, and we discuss the Journey to Multi-cloud Management. We tried to fit this big topic in less than one hour and we touched on many points, such as the evolution towards SDDC and Private Clouds, the rise of Public Clouds, cloud native applications and finally the paradigm shift into multi-cloud. The rise for multi-cloud is creating new needs, like consistent automation and operations, and we discuss what VMware offers to cover these needs. You can reach out to Martijn via Twitter (@baecke) and his personal blog: http://thinkcloud.nl/   Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.   Hope you enjoy the show. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Links: Martijn's post on VMware Blogs: Journey Towards Multi-Cloud Management Martijn's Lightboard video: VMware Cloud Strategy with Martijn Baecke

On the 24th episode of the show, I'm joined by Rohan Naggi Sr. Technical Product Manager at VMware, and we discuss about VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud.  SD-WAN is a booming market and it's promising to solve many challenges of traditional WAN solutions. There are tens of vendors in this market and VeloCloud has been one of the noteworthy ones since the beginning. VeloCloud has been acquired by VMware in 2017, and  it's currently part of the Network and Security Business Unit. We discuss many topics with Rohan, including the need for SD-WAN and why VeloCloud, then we look under the hood and discuss the architectural components of the solution. If you're looking for a primer on this topic, the level on this episode will be great for you. You can reach out to Rohan via Twitter (@lifeboy) and LinkedIn.    Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.   Hope you enjoy the show. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Links: The book Rohan has co-authored: SD-WAN The Networking Blueprint for Modern Businesses Rohan's podcast: SD-WAN 360 Required SD-WAN characteristics by Gartner Show Notes 01:00 - Intro 06:45 - What is the problem statement with the traditional networks. What was the need for SD-WAN. 14:15 - What are the key capabilities of any SD-WAN solution 24:30 - Why VMware SD-WAN 34:15 - Now that we know of why VMware SD-WAN, lets go one more level deep and understand the VMware SD-WAN components and Architecture. 42:00 - Closing notes

Virtual Stack Podcast is 1 year old! Thanks for your interest and support so far. Here’s to many many years and episodes!   On the 23rd episode of the show, I’m joined by Matt Wallace, CTO of Faction. Faction is a multi-cloud platform as a service provider and one of the first partners of VMware around the VMware Cloud on AWS solution. You should see their 2019 VMware Cloud on AWS Market Survey, which will shed some light on hybrid cloud adoption and challenges in the market.   With Matt, we discuss many topics, such as Faction’s hybrid and multi-cloud solutions, benefits for the customers, some customer references and trends in the market towards cloud technology and customer adoption.   You can reach out to Matt via Twitter (@mattwallace) and LinkedIn. You can also follow Faction via Twitter (@factioninc) and their website. They announce free webinars on their website, which I can recommend you to follow.   Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. Hope you enjoy the show. As usual, feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

I’m back with the 22nd episode of Virtual Stack after a long break. This will be a solo flight without any guests and I’ll be talking about the news and announcements from the VMworld US 2019 that took place this week. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Links: What’s New at VMworld 2019 General Sessions at VMworld 2019 VMware Tanzu Completes the Modern Applications Picture Project Pacific: Kubernetes to the Core Introducing Project Pacific VMware Unveils Innovations Across Its Industry-Leading Workspace ONE Platform to Help Organizations Grow, Expand and Transform Their Business Announcing VMware vRealize Automation 8.0 Announcing VMware vRealize Operations 8.0 vRealize Network Insight 5.0: Expanding Network Visibility to the Branch

VMware Cloud on AWS has proven that IT infrastructure with VMware SDDC stack atop can be ordered as a cloud service; in a scalable, smooth and agile manner. But what about the scenarios where you need to have that compute power on-premises? Enter VMware Cloud on Dell EMC! On the 21st episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, Adam Bohle (Lead Cloud Specialist Systems Engineer at VMware) and I discuss about VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, which has just been announced at Dell Technologies World in March. This is an Edge-as-a-Service solution, which will bring VMware SDDC stack on top of Dell EMC’s VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure as a cloud service. You can reach out to Adam via Twitter and LinkedIn. Virtual Stack is available on all major apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 02:00 - Intro 04:30 - What is VMC on Dell EMC and what has been announced at DT World in March? 07:30 - What are the main use cases and which industries does this solution fit better? 14:00 - Main differentiators of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC in this competitive market. 16:45 - Edge Computing, Device Edge and Cloud Edge. 20:30 - Software, hardware and service components of the solution 24:00 - Security and data privacy aspects of this solution. 26:00 - Participating in Beta, delivery timelines of the solution 30:00 - Are there any plans to create a platform to manage Edge, Cloud and Private Cloud workloads from the same interface? 33:10 - What’s VMC on AWS Outposts? How’s it related to the VMC on DellEMC? 36:15 - Closing notes, contact information Links: Announcing VMware Cloud on Dell EMC (VMware Blogs) VMware Cloud Portal Product Page and Beta registration form

On the 20th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I’m joined by Martijn Smit and we geek out on the recently announced vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) 4.1. This release brings lots of new features, such as, Container Visibility and Security, Application Discovery and Visibility and many more! You can reach out to Martijn via Twitter (@smitmartijn). You can also follow his work on his blog (lostdomain.org) and VMware Blogs. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 01:30 - Intros 05:30 - Quick highlights of vRNI 4.1 09:30 - Application discovery and visibility feature 19:00 - Container security and visibility feature 31:45 - F5 Load Balancer support 33:45 - NSX-T 2.4 and Policy Manager support 36:30 - How can we can our hands on vRNI? 38:00 - What are the license tiers? Any difference between the on-premise and SaaS versions? 42:30 - Closing notes Links: vRNI 4.1 Release notes Martijn’s post on VMware Blog Try Network Insight 4.1 CNCF Survey on Containers

AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning) and DL (Deep Learning) are some of the hottest IT buzzwords of our time. If you’re working in tech industry, chances are that you hear or read something about them almost every day. It looks like they are the answer to every question, and the solution to every problem, including wars and global hunger. AI/ML is used in self-driving cars, but what about self-driving, self-optimising data centers? On the 19th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I’m joined by Greg Burk, Senior Staff Architect at VMware, and we discuss about AI, ML, and their use cases in today’s Enterprise IT, especially Self-Driving and Self-Optimizing Data Centers. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 02:00 - Intro 05:10 - What’s AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning) and DL (Deep Learning)? 12:00 - AI/ML is not a new technology, what caused the big increase in popularity in the last 3-4 years? 18:00 - Where (use case, vertical, industry) do you expect AI to drive the biggest transformation? 26:30 - How do you expect AI/ML primarily serve in the Data Center? For driving the DC autonomously, or only for log crunching and creating insights for the people that are running the DC? 35:00 - Is it possible to achieve self-drive and self-optimisation in a HW defined DC, or is SDDC a must? 40:00 - What’s VMware’s approach on Self-Driving/Optimizing Data Centers? (a.k.a. Project Magna) 52:30 - Closing notes Links and books: AI and the Birth of the Next Generation Data Center AI and Deep Learning at VMworld 2018 Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

Do you ever get stressed about giving speech, even though you know the subject by heart? Or have hard time expressing your knowledge and delivering your message effectively on a blog post? The answer is yes for many people, including me. Good news; all of these are skills that you can develop with some practice and attention. Amy Lewis, Director of Influence Marketing at VMware, joins me on the 18th episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast, and shares her knowledge and tips for improving communication skills for engineers. You can reach Amy on Twitter (@commsninja), and also don’t forget to check her podcasts: Tech Confessions and The Geek Whisperers. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 01:00 Intro 08:00 Working as an Influence Marketing Director 24:00 Some advice on giving speech in front of audience, either 10 people or 1000 people 37:30 What tricks can improve technical blogging skills 42:00 How to find mentors and advisors on this subject 49:30 Contact info, recommended books and closing Links and books: TechConfessions the Show, S2 | E1: Pat Gelsinger Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers  Creativity Inc.  Phoenix Project

On the 17th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I’m joined by Dumlu Timuralp (NSX Sr. Systems Engineer at VMware) and we take on the challenge of squeezing all the new features of NSX-T 2.4 into a 45-minute podcast! NSX is VMware’s flagship software-defined data center networking and security solution. I was already surprised by the amount of new features and enhancements introduced in the last 1-1.5 years, but NSX-T 2.4 has totally exceeded every release that came before. On this episode, we try to summarise the new features and focus on the key areas; intelligent operations, security, networking and more. Great to have Dumlu on the show for the 2nd time. You can reach out to him via LinkedIn and Twitter, and expect to listen to him on his next appearance soon. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 02:00 - Intro 05:45 - Intelligent Operations: Management cluster, Installation & upgrade enhancements, N-VDS visualisation, Port-mirroring filters. 11:50 - Security: Layer 7 FW, Identity Based FW, FQDN/URL whitelisting, IPv6 in DFW and Edge FW, Extended RBAC options, Guest and Network Introspection. 24:15 - Networking: Simplified UI, Naming changes, iBGP, Scalability and performance enhancements, IPv6 33:00 - Additional new features: Declarative policy management, New Ansible module and Terraform provider, Load Balancer and VPN enhancements, Certification and compliance updates. 41:45 - Closing notes Links: Introducing NSX-T 2.4 – A Landmark Release in the History of NSX - VMware Blogs - https://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2019/02/introducing-nsx-t-2-4-a-landmark-release-in-the-history-of-nsx.html/ VMware NSX-T Data Center 2.4 Release Notes - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-NSX-T-Data-Center/2.4.0/rn/VMware-NSX-T-Data-Center-240-Release-Notes.html VMware Presents at Networking Field Day 20 - https://techfieldday.com/appearance/vmware-presents-at-networking-field-day-20/ VMware Configuration Maximums - https://configmax.vmware.com/home 

On the 16th episode of the Virtual Stack podcast, I’m joined by Karl Childs, Sr. Manager in the VMware Certification Development team. We start our conversation talking about the latest VMware announcement on re-certification, then we talk about the present and future of VMware certifications.   You can reach out to Karl via Twitter (@karlchilds). Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@emregirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech   Show Notes: 00:10 - Intro 10:00 - What important announcement has been recently made by VMware, what was the reason behind it. 17:30 - How’s VMware Certification program staying up to date with new technologies and product releases? 23:30 - Are there any new VMware certification tracks we can expect? 29:30 - What do you think about the changes in the certification education landscape? 37:10 - Do you see any changes to the certification experience in the future? If yes, what will change? 40:15 - Closing notes   Links: VMware announcement of re-certification: https://blogs.vmware.com/education/2019/02/04/vmware-certification-recertification-is-changing-and-what-it-means-to-you/. VMware Certifications: https://www.vmware.com/education-services/certification.html

With the rise of cloud-native architectures built on containers distributed microservices, developers are encountering challenges with visibility, management, and control of these new applications. The Service Mesh concept was created to address and overcome these challenges.    On the 15th episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast, I’m joined by Mark Schweighardt, Director of Product Marketing in the Network & Security Business Unit (NSBU) of VMware. Together with Mike, we discuss about the Service Mesh concept, cloud-native applications, Istio/Envoy, and VMware’s upcoming Service Mesh solution, VMware NSX Service Mesh.   You can reach out to Mark via LinkedIn. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@egirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.   Show notes 00:45 - Intro 02:30 - Where are we in the journey from monolithic to cloud native apps 06:00 - Why are the customers migrating to cloud native approach 11:00 - What’s Service Mesh? What challenge does it solve? 15:30 - What are the main use cases for Service Mesh? 20:00 - Which industries will be adopting Service Mesh the fastest? 22:00 - Who are the stakeholders in a Service Mesh deployment, how will it change the life of an infrastructure engineer? 31:15 - What are Istio and Envoy, and what’s the architecture like? 37:00 - What’s VMware NSX Service Mesh, what added capabilities will it have on top of Istio? 42:00 - VMware NSX Service Mesh release timelines 44:30 - Useful resources, contact details and closing notes Links Istio Project: https://istio.io/ VMware NSX Service Mesh: https://pages.cloud.vmware.com/vmware-nsx-service-mesh VMware Blog on the VMware NSX Service Mesh announcement: https://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2018/12/nsx-service-mesh.html/

On the 14th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, I’m joined by Christoph Buschbeck from VMware and we talk about AppDefense, VMware’s data centre endpoint security solution that embeds threat detection and response into the virtualisation layer. We look into the Enterprise IT Security landscape of today, what’s working well, what can be improved, and why we should be "ensuring good" vs. "chasing bad”. You can reach out to Christoph via LinkedIn and Twitter (@cbuschbeck). Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter (@egirici), LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show Notes: 01:30 - Intro 03:30 - AppDefense in a nutshell 06:00 - “Goldilocks” zone and what’s not working well on the current Enterprise IT security approach 15:00 - AppDefense architecture 29:45 - What’s the “manifest file", how does AppDefense capture the intended state of an app? 45:10 - Future of AppDefense, Integration with NSX, Adaptive Micro-segmentation 50:00 - Licensing model and how to test AppDefense 55:00 - Closing notes Links: Transforming Security in a Cloud and Mobile World (VMworld US 2018 session with a live demo) Security, Virtualization, & The Goldilocks Zone - Martin Casado vSphere Platinum Solution Overview  vSphere Platinum Promotion – free VMware Cloud on AWS credits

On the 13th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, Dimitar (Mitko) Vasilev joined me to talk about his journey from a Network Engineer to a Startup CEO. On this slightly longer episode, Mitko explains his journey starting from university, Cisco, his first startup - OA Digital, and his current endeavour - Data Mining Platform. We talked about several personal, inter-personal and technical aspects of building your own startup, which I believe you’ll find interesting as much as I did.   You can reach out to Mitko on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitkovasilev/), Twitter (@iotcoi) and mitko@dataminingplatform.com. Mitko will soon start his own podcast called “Day 0” so keep an eye on that as well.   Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.    Show notes: Intro: 02:10 - University, first jobs and Cisco. 09:50 - Cisco openBerlin 19:30 - Story of OA Digital 25:20 - Story of Data Mining Platform The Journey: 29:15 - The motivation at the beginning of the startup journey. 33:15 - The process between having an idea and validating that there’s a business lying behind it. 35:50 - How does it feel to go into a different domain - from IT/Networking/IoT into real estate and smart buildings? 39:05 - You have a good idea but you’re not the "maker” (e.g software engineer, electronic/mechanical engineer). How do you find the right people and form a team? 41:50 - How would you work on your start up without interfering with your day-to-day job? 43:50 - Knowing the right time to jump off the corporate train, leaving the good salary and perks. Financial planning. 47:10 - Dealing with stress and emotions, communication with family and friends. 49:10 - How does an engineer teach himself/herself to be a CEO? E.g. leadership, finance, marketing, business acumen. 53:50 - Knowing the right time “to pull the plug” and close down your startup. 57:00 - What would you do differently if you started the journey again? Future: 01:00:30 - What’s the next big thing that will evolve the technology in the near future 01:04:10 - What would you study if you were 18 again? 01:06:50 - Closing notes Books: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

Happy new year! On the 12th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, Martijn (@smitmartijn) and I will be talking about vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) version 4.0. vRNI 4.0 has been released on December 20th and it’s full of cool new features and enhancements. This is not a vRNI 101 episode, but in a nutshell, vRNI is VMware’s security and network visibility tool that helps customers plan application security and migration, optimise and troubleshoot virtual and physical networks, and manage & scale NSX environments. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show notes: 05:30 - Why do you need vRNI? Main use cases? 11:40 - New features on vRNI 4.0. 15:15 - VMware Cloud on AWS support. 22:40 - Support for Cisco ACI, ASA, F5 Big-IP, sFlow and more. 29:35 - NSX-T support enhancements. 34:51 - Configuring static/dynamic baselines and thresholds. 38:30 - Scalability, performance and usability enhancements. 43:25 - Upgrade path to vRNI 4.0. 46:40 - PowervRNI and the automation of vRNI. 52:01 - Closing notes, contact info. Links: Guest: Martijn Smit (@smitmartijn) vRNI 4.0 Official VMware Blog Post vRealize Network Insight 4.0 Release Notes vRealize Network Insight 4.0 User Guide PowervRNI on GitHub Martijn’s Personal Blog: http://lostdomain.org/, with lots of articles on NSX, vRNI and more.

If you're working in networking, or Enterprise IT in general, chances are that you are pursuing or have pursued at least one technical certification track. Almost every leading vendor has certifications tracks, so does VMware.  Today on the 11th episode of Virtual Stack Podcast, we will discuss about the top-tier certification of VMware: VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX). I'll be joined by two experts who has already passed this certification: Marco van Baggum (VCDX-DCV #223), SDDC Architect at ITQ and Johan van Amersfoort (VCDX-DTM #238), EUC Architect at ITQ. We discuss about both technical and non-technical aspects of this touch certification. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech. Show notes: Guests: Marco van Baggum (@vMBaggum,vMBaggum.nl) Johan van Amersfoort (@vhojan, vHojan.nl) Offical VCDX Directory VCDX Certification Page VCDX Discussion Forums on VMware Technology Network Books: VDI Design Guide: A comprehensive guide to help you design VMware Horizon, based on modern standards, by Johan van Amersfoort (ISBN:9781977535528) IT Architect: Foundation in the Art of Infrastructure Design: A Practical Guide for IT Architects (ISBN:9780996647700) IT Architect Series: The Journey: A Guidebook for Anyone Interested in IT Architecture (ISBN: 9781483473642) VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) Survey

On the 10th episode of Virtual Stack, Stijn Depril (@sdepril - vSAN Specialist SE Benelux at VMware) and I talk about vSAN, VMware's Software Defined Storage (or as some will call, hyper-converged) solution.  Stijn is active on social media, and don't forget to check his blog at vmuskeeters.com and YouTube channel. Some important links that we mentioned on the show: VMware Compatibility Guide vSAN ReadyNodes Configurator VMware Cloud on AWS roadmap on storage technologies Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

In today's Enterprise IT world, most of the organisations use services of at least one public cloud provider. This brings many advantages like agility, but it creates new challenges such as loss of visibility across clouds and inconsistent network and security policies. NSX Cloud is the tool that can help you to achieve operational consistency in a multi-cloud world. On this episode, I'm joined by Dumlu Timuralp (https://twitter.com/dumlutimuralp) and we discuss about NSX Cloud. Here are some links that can give you further info on this subject: NSX Cloud product page: https://www.vmware.com/products/nsx-cloud.html Lightboard session on NSX Cloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAZ3stc_kHw Introduction to NSX Cloud Breakout session from VMworld US 2018: https://videos.vmworld.com/global/2018/videoplayer/22575.  Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

VMworld Europe 2018 was a blast. On this brief episode, I talk about the highlights of the event from my perspective. Here are the links to some of the stuff I talk about on the show: VMware Blog - Event Recap: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmworld/2018/11/vmworld-2018-europe-recap.html Day 1: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmworld/2018/11/vmworld-2018-europe-day-1-recap.html Day 2: https://blogs.vmware.com/vmworld/2018/11/vmworld-2018-europe-day-2-recap.html Heptio blog post about the acquisition: https://blog.heptio.com/heptio-will-be-joining-forces-with-vmware-on-a-shared-cloud-native-mission-b01225b1bc9e. Kubernetes Steering Commitee: https://github.com/kubernetes/steering  VMworld On-demand Video Library: https://videos.vmworld.com/global/2018 Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

On this show, Gilles Chekroun and I talk about VMware Cloud on AWS. Gilles is a Lead SE for VMC on AWS in VMware and he has tons knowledge and experience on cloud and networking in general. But on this short episode, we dip our feet in the use cases for hybrid cloud and why VMC on AWS can be a good solution the enterprises. Follow the show because we will definitely revisit this topic and see what's under the hood of VMC on AWS. Don't forget to check Gilles' personal blog at gilles.cloud. There you can find his great demo where he's using Alexa to fully automate an SDDC deployment on VMC on AWS! Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Martijn (@smitmartijn, and soon: @vnetworkguy) is my first repeat host, and on this episode we talk about the VMware vExpert program. VMware vExpert is an honorary title that VMware grants to individuals for advocating the VMware's products and solutions. With Martijn, we discuss the program in detail, what the benefits are, what you need to do to be granted with the vExpert title, and more. Read more on: https://vexpert.vmware.com/.  Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Security is a hot topic in Enterprise IT and it will always stay like that. There are several new methods and approaches to optimise security and micro-segmentation is one of those. On this episode, I'm joined by Robert Kloosterhuis (@thefluffysysop, http://thefluffyadmin.net/) and we enter the world of micro-segmentation. We talk about distributed firewall capabilities of NSX, best practices and tools.  Here are some great content if you'd like to dig deeper in this subject. Security with NSX Data Center VMware NSX Micro-segmentation Day 1 VMware NSX Micro-segmentation Day 2 Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network) is a hot topic these days. On this episode, I give a brief overview of what SD-WAN is. I also talk about the challenges seen on branch networking today and how SD-WAN can help us. Check this free e-book: http://www.velocloud.com/sd-wan-resources/white-papers/software-defined-wan-for-dummies. Hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to share your feedback via Twitter, LinkedIn or virtualstack.tech.

Today on this episode, I'm joined by Martijn Smit (@smitmartijn) and we discuss about why network engineers should invest their time in honing their software development and scripting skills. Then we go into discussing what are the tools and methods for doing this. Here are the links to the resources we mentioned on the show: Udacity - Learn to Code (Nanodegree program) PowerShell: Getting Started (by Michael Bender) PowerNSX Using Ansible for Network Automation (YouTube) Ansible IOS_Config Module: Part 1 Configuring Cisco Routers with simple commands (YouTube) VMware {code} Network to Code Hope you all enjoy this show. Feel free to reach me on @emregirici on Twitter or https://www.linkedin.com/in/emregirici/ to share your comments, feedbacks or requests.  

On this episode, I talked about some of the interesting announcements at VMworld US that took place in August 26-30 in Las Vegas. I focused mainly on the NSBU (Network and Security Business Unit) news, such as, new updates on NSX-T, NSX Cloud, vRNI, but also the collaboration with Arista. There has also been a few interesting "Tech Preview" announcements, and I've briefly talked about them. Here are some of the links where you can find more information on announcements that I've talked about: What's New at VMworld 2018 NSX Portfolio Realizing the Virtual Cloud Network for Customers Arista Introduces Secure Cloud Networking Adaptive Micro-segmentation – Built-in Application Security from the Network to the Workload VMware NSX Helps Customers Build a Virtual Cloud Network to Connect and Protect Apps, Data, and Users Across Cloud Environments VMware Announces Intent to Acquire CloudHealth Technologies, a Global Platform for Multi-Cloud Operations Taking Innovation to New and Unexpected Levels at VMworld 2018 VMware has edge, AI, blockchain ambitions VMware Hands on Labs (HOL) If you have any questions, comments or feedback, reach out to me on linkedin.com/in/emregirici or @emregirici on Twitter. Thanks for listening!

Here is the 1st episode of the Virtual Stack Podcast! This short episode includes a quick introduction of myself, why am I making this podcast and what my content is going to be. Enjoy! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emregirici/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/emregirici