In the Clouds ...

Gilles Chekroun Lead NSX Systems Engineer - VMware Europe --- 
 Why using Code for Infrastructure? Infrastructure as code is a way to define Compute, Network and Security infrastructure through source code. Such code can be kept in source controlled environment to allow deployment of tested infrastructure avoiding lots of human mistakes. It is becoming a very strong trend in our industry for pushing Network, Compute and Security infrastructure to cloud providers like Amazon Web Services. This article describes the use of Terraform to build the infrastructure for my VMware NSX Cloud lab in AWS. What is Terraform? Terraform enables you to create, change, and improve infrastructure. It is an open source tool from Hashicorp that codifies APIs into declarative configuration files. The idea for my lab is to build the AWS infrastructure with Terraform and configure it with Ansible . I am using VMware NSX Cloud as an example of how we can create the proper AWS VPCs, rules, ga

Gilles Chekroun Lead NSX Systems Engineer - VMware Europe --- The magic of Elastic Network Interfaces          During a recent discussion with a customer, the need for deploying a bunch of tests Virtual Machines over a VMware Cloud on AWS vCenter has risen and the customer asked if it would be possible to use AWS S3 as the repository for that. Absolutely YES !  And this is where having native AWS resources access using ENI in VMware Cloud on AWS is coming into play. In that case we are going to setup an end point in our VPC to S3 so the traffic stays in the same region and on the internal AWS network. NO Egress Charges !! Create S3 endpoint Log in AWS console and select VPC / Endpoints Choose S3 Service Select your VPC and route table Create the S3 End Point To make sure NO traffic will go across the Internet, and for this test, detach any Internet Gateways (IGW) from your VPC. Setup Firewall rules  Open your VMware Cloud on AWS dashboard and create

Gilles Chekroun Lead NSX Systems Engineer - VMware Europe --- The power of APIs         "Alexa, add one host to my SDDC" seems to be a science fiction voice command in a starship vessel but it's not. With fully integrated APIs, the VMware Cloud on AWS interface can be driven by any kind of software that can send an API call to an interface. This article describes how to build a simple AWS Lambda function to drive an Amazon Echo device to receive and reply to voice commands. Architecture The architecture is quite simple and involves a voice command to the Echo device requesting some action or status. Alexa triggers a Lambda function that sends an API call to VMware Cloud on AWS and sends a log message to a Slack channel. The VMware Cloud on AWS APIs are listed at  https://vmc.vmware.com/swagger/index.html#/ You need to have access rights and be authenticated to be able to see them. To call the APIs, you also need a refresh token from your SDDC organiza