VCD RoundTable

Hello and welcome! This is VCD Roundtable Ep. 53.

And a lot has happened in the VMware Cloud Provider space,

not only that we had, I think, one of the largest Challenge

Days in Sweden last week --

no, this week.

But also quite a few announcements

from VMwareby Broadcom around products, licensing,

packaging, and also some announcements

we are going to make at the end

regarding some upcoming events.

But before we get to that, Sascha, do you want to start?

I can.

Hello.

Yes, welcome also from my side.

Maybe you can mute yourself.

Yes.

OK.

Welcome also from my side.

Yeah, we had a great week with the Challenge Days

in Scandanavia, a lot of new

inputs from the service providers,

some parts we want to talk about later,

so also some hints about some new features

and how they work.

And with that, Matthias.

Yeah, curious to hear all the news, Toby.

You?

Yes, also the same for me.

Hello and welcome to Ep. 53.

So back to Sascha.

Yes, so with that, as a topic

for this episode of the VCD Roundtable,

we will cover a bit of what's new,

what's changing in the service provider

program, and what's interesting to

know, what we want to share with you.

So Monday and Tuesday, we had

the Challenge Days in Stockholm.

And there was one interesting topic.

We got a few requests on how it works,

and nobody finds how does it work in the user interface

or in the Cloud Director interface.

And this is a VM placement on guest OS base.

So that means we have a lot of

vendors who are in need or products that

need to be licensed on the host space.

And a lot of service providers

started to select or create

affinity rules at the vCenter level.

But the problem is, if we create it on the vCenter level,

we had problems every time in

combination with Cloud Director.

And now we have this feature

with the last Cloud Director version

that we can create policies that

replace VMs on dedicated hosts based

on the guest OS.

Yes, Matthias?

I would not say with the latest VCD version

that features there since--

I don't know, 10.4, 10.3?

Okay, yeah.

Just saying.

Yeah, sure.

But again, a lot of--

Maybe it just appeared within the community.

Yes, so a few service providers searched for it.

And it's only possible to configure it over API.

So that's the point.

Have you found it in the

interface on Cloud Director?

Really?

So maybe you can share where it is.

It's a placement policy.

So maybe a misunderstanding.

Maybe it's a misunderstanding.

But in the end, you just

create these DRS groups in vSphere.

And then you grab those groups

and map it in the cloud director UI

in the service provider context.

Then you can publish those placement policies to a tenant.

And then you just use it.

That's how you place a virtual machine to a DRS group.

And that has a DRS rule.

Then the virtual machine is placed on the resepctive host

group.

Yes, but the feature means now that you

can place virtual machines automatically

based on guest OS.

So if you have selected Windows, for example,

all Windows virtual machines will be placed on dedicated--

sources. Ahh, so that's the misunderstanding.

So you're talking about an automated placement.

Yes.

Yes.

Because of licensing and so on.

So maybe it was there before, but I don't know.

As Matthias has just heard, we're talking

about two different flavors.

So the first flavor is just to have a normal VM placement

policy, which has been there since 10.3

It was there in VCD, where you as a customer can select,

that you would like to utilize this placement policy.

And then my VM gets placed on cluster number APC, whatever.

Or inside the cluster of a particular group of hosts.

But what is new--

and this is what Sascha is referring with 10.6.1--

is now-- and this is only available via the API.

If the customer selects, for example, Windows,

automatically the VMs gets placed

on the host, which are entitled for Windows licensing.

At the end, we are still talking about the same it is.

A DRS-based group, host group, and VM group.

But now, with 10.6.1 VCD can do this automatically

without doing any interference from a service provider

or from the customer itself

just based on the OS you selected.

Get a little amendment, and it's 10.6.1.

10.6.1, OK.

Not 10.6.1.1.

OK.

Good.

So what else is new?

So yeah, maybe let's start with

the newest information about

the new pricing guide.

There is new information about download quantity

of license keys.

What does it mean?

So they are-- yeah, for a long time, and in the contract,

there was a maximum limit of license keys you can or you

should create per contract.

It was limited on the commits.

But this was never executed in the past.

And now there is--

or there comes a message that you

can have a maximum of 200% of license keys

regarding your commit.

That means, for example, if you have 2,000 license keys--

2,000 calls in a commit, you can

create a maximum of 4,000 license keys on that contract.

Then that will become interesting for a lot of service

providers who are running a

lot of hosts in maintenance mode

or non-active and try to use them as an overage.

So that's one very interesting point here.

And in the last weeks, there was the message

that they will go down to 125% -- the max you can create and

download.

But that looks like this has changed again,

because this information with the 125% is removed.

And also in the pricing guide, they only

mention now the 200%.

So let's see what happens there.

But if you need more license

keys, maybe you can create them.

So the limit will be active in the next days.

That's one important new topic.

The other topic is--

I think the latest email communication

was today regarding this topic you just mentioned.

I think the last email I received about that was today.

So they're constantly sending

out emails over and over and over.

Yes.

And with that, also the announcement today,

usage meter 9 is out.

That means you have -- as aservice provider have now --

90 days to upgrade your usage meters.

That means it's very easy.

There is an upgrade process.

The only important topic, if you upgrade your usage meter,

you need to create a token in the new portal, in the VCF

portal, and need to enter this token in your usage meter

when you're deploying the update.

That's important.

Also, for new usage meters, you need

to first deploy the usage meter.

You will get the ID like before from the usage meter.

You can enter it in your VCF portal.

Then you will-- or then you can create the token

or must create the token.

And the token must be placed manually in the usage meter.

Again, that's so a connection can be established.

And with the new usage meter, there are some parts

you need to take a look at.

So first of all, please make sure

that you have new license keys deployed on your systems,

because only the new license keys can be measured.

And the new usage meter is now has the feature

that the usage meter can meter also vDefend Firewall.

And as we all know from the different contact tracks,

until a few days ago, I think it was Monday or Tuesday

when the new pricing guide was released.

So before, there were no or there were no add-ons

or no overage for add-ons.

So you needed to go with a commit

if you wanted to go with vDefend firewall.

And there is now an exception for vDefend (NSX vDefend)

So you can go now on demand with Distributed Firewall

and Gateway Firewall and also

with advanced threat protection.

On the first view, that's a benefit for all

of the service providers who want to try it.

There's also the information coming out now

that it is counted on host-based

no longer on cluster-based like it was before.

But that also means, please, before you

deploy your new usage meter, please check your systems.

If Distributed Firewall is enabled,

If you're running a user-created

Firewall, because if you deploy the new usage meter,

running Distributed Firewall, have no license,

it will be metered now.

And you have to pay the overage for that

for the list price.

So that's very important to know.

So yeah, please check it beforehand.

And additional to that with the hosts,

so on the host-based Distributed Firewall,

so you can apply Distributed Firewall

and pin Distributed Firewall

to specific hosts in a cluster.

So if you have only a small amount of customers

who want to create or want to test or use Distributed

Firewall, you are now able to use this feature

and license only the hosts for Distributed Firewall

you want to have.

One thing I would like to add, especially

on the NSX side, please ensure that you really

have only new license keys.

The legacy keys will not be metered in the correct way.

This is also clearly documented already.

The old license keys or the legacy keys

will not be metered in the right way, which then

can lead to a massive overage.

So please ensure that you really are

going to utilize the new NSX license keys.

And if you have the add-ons like vDefend,

then utilize the add-on license keys.

But please get rid--

before you really switch to

the new usage meter to version 9,

please get rid also of the old NSX license keys.

That's really an important topic in the documentation.

Yes, and with that, take a look at Distributed Firewall

and add-ons threat protection.

Work together with your sales team

and create packages out of it.

Because now it becomes really interesting for you

to sell it to your customers.

Also, if you have only a small amount of customers

who want to start with Distributed Firewall,

but security comes more and more important.

And with that, you are now able to start

with a small amount of hosts.

I think it's overall very important to just keep an eye

on all these timelines which are now showing up, especially

in Europe.

They fall in the summer season.

So keep in mind that there are now additional timelines

or something like that going to come for usage meter.

Because that directly also influences new releases

from Broadcom and other things.

And the time frame they now provided

is longer than what the contract actually said,

because that was 14 days originally in there.

So that would have been a much bigger stunt for everybody.

Also, I don't think Sascha mentioned

that there is documentation which came out

from Broadcom on how to handle

the offline bundles and stuff

like that for VCF 5.2.

For VCF 9, there should be a better solution

for service providers.

We will see.

But for 5.2, it is now clearly documented

how you should provide these offline bundles and everything

else to your customers.

And we can only strongly encourage you to really review

that.

Even after discussions, it's like Broadcom

said again and again very, very clearly,

it is not allowed to provide user accounts to the Broadcom

portal to sub-CSPs.

Even if you are basically three providers together

under one contract, only the one under the contract

is allowed to access the

Broadcom portals, the Broadcom software

downloads, do the license management,

and everything else.

Any other usage is a violation of the partner contract

and the license agreement.

And we did not only have the change

of choosing between CSP and resale, this

is directly also related to, let's say,

misbehavior from partners.

So even if you think that you can actually still do that,

better be sure to really, really clarify that.

I don't want to see you in a situation where you run

into any serious issues with Broadcom

because from what is heard, they are not actually

going to joke around on these items.

So make sure that you follow that.

There is a Knowledge Base article describing all of that

and how to do all of these things.

And for 9, it hopefully should be different.

We also heard during our event on Monday and Tuesday

that there is a potential

chance that VCF 9 might get a new VCD

version on top of it, but only to make VCF 9 work.

But again, the big, big question is,

with the announcement that VCF in the future

is not going to be--

VCD or VCD is not going to be the multi-tenant solution

moving forward, starting with 9.

The big question is really is whether you are going to do--

or whether you are going to want to combine these.

However, with all the changes in VCF 9,

we said that in the last two days in Stockholm very, very

clearly again and again, it makes sense

besides moving yourself to 5.2 point whatsoever,

to also make sure that your internal teams are all

trained already.

Start training on VCF 9.

There are so many substantial changes in the infrastructure

that it is good to actually get going on that one

so that you are prepared if your customers demand anything

from the perspective.

So that is good to know as well.

So what else do we have?

Any other news, Matthias?

We have a lot of rain currently in Vienna,

but no, the weather changes.

This is the news I have.

So that means you have a lot of clouds in Vienna.

Yeah, no.

...

They're all gone.

No backup, no restore.

Maybe one more topic on news.

So...

Okay.

So Tanzu Mission Control is back.

So service providers for tenants of service providers.

So you can deploy again Tanzu Mission Control

self managed.

That's included now in VCF.

So that will be maybe for a few customers

a real benefit to manage the Kubernetes environment.

And it's again unclear what happens with TKGM.

So in the last newsletter, they clearly

mentioned that Broadcom will continue

TKGM in the Telco Cloud Platform for Telco customers.

But CSP customers are not mentioned there.

So maybe we get some more information in the next days

or week what happens with TKGM for service providers,

especially for the CSE customers.

What we heard is that will be supported for all

of the service providers who

used it before in the old model.

But yeah, there is nothing in there written currently.

So let's take a look.

And what's also new in the new pricing guide

is that data services, they were included before in VCF.

And they are still included for everyone

who used data services with VCF.

But everyone who starts now with data services,

it's no longer included and needs to be licensed per core.

Is this or is it not a good idea.

I don't know.

Depending on the view for the CSPs, no. But for the

shareholders maybe, let's see.

Yeah.

One thing here to add, Sascha, you mentioned it.

TMC is now part of VCF.

On the other hand, TMC as in SaaS application will go away.

So for those who are still

utilizing TMC hosted by Broadcom,

please be aware this solution will go away.

So you need to figure out how you can migrate your hosted

TMC to a local installed TMC.

Good.

I think that was a lot of news from the VCSP program

for another week.

Just as a wrap up, I mean, we are going

to come together with a group of our AI specialists team

here in Dubai next week

together with VMware and Broadcom.

We have trainers from the US and the UK and everything else

fly in so that we have a two days AI workshop.

We are then going to head over to Bonn

for the Service Provider Summit.

Going to hold a keynote and workshop during that event.

And then we are going to be at GITEX in Berlin.

The following week and then we are off to Palo Alto

for the first week of June.

So if you are a service provider or if you are working

for a service provider, if you want to also experience

Challenge Days, if you want to actually be part

of the ArchitectureThink Tank, then this

will be a very, very special edition this year.

Based on the invite by Broadcom, we

will most likely we are clarifying the last couple

of things tonight.

But it looks like we will run both events

on the Broadcom premises.

We will have support from the BU's,

but they will not change the

generic format of our sessions.

They just want to actually be able to network with you

and actually get to know the service providers

a lot better.

So for those who were the last couple of months,

as always saying, "it's so hard to get hold of these people"

-- this is your chance, your opportunity.

If you want to join these events, please ping us.

It's still four weeks out.

Monday, Tuesday, Challenge Days, Wednesday, Thursday

is the Architecture Think Tank, I think

we have a certain cap in number of people.

And I'm expecting the remaining seats to go pretty fast.

So if you want to join in, let us know as quickly as possible

so that we get your seats reserved.

And then we are going to be back in Dubai

for another Challenge Days mid of June.

So also, if you really want to have dry heat then,

humid heat, then there's a place to be.

We will definitely have above 30 degrees Celsius.

There is a high chance for over 40 degrees Celsius outside.

So if you enjoy that, that is definitely

the place for your Challenge Days.

That being said, thank you for participating.

Thank you for joining in.

If you have any questions or anything else,

feel always free to ping us or join one of our communities.

With that being said, I'm out.

Sascha?

Yes, thank you.

And see you at one of the Challenge Days

or the Architecture Think Tank.

Or maybe if you are on GITEX or at the Service Providers

Summit, ping us and let's it together.

Toby?

Yeah, thanks for joining.

See you in the next episode.

See you in one of the next events.

Matthias.

Thanks, everyone.

Take care.

See you around.