vmworld

with difficulty ;)

Cisco doesn't expect customers to rip and replace there current infrastructure, if that's what you mean. That's why we have a ton of designs and white papers on migrating to ACI, while still utilizing your current network.

their =)

It's a complex problem. Model the app and deploy using know best practices is desirable and then tie into devops to push new builds and customization. Tie into CI/CD for ongoing configuration mgmt. There's also that pet vs cattle mindset change

this is a great question, and hard to answer. This space is moving so fast when it comes to #CloudNative apps. We've seen the announcements today about Photon Platform for instance. I think #mesosphere DCOS is still leading in many areas.

@JuanLage seeing lots of interest in containers but the reality is not everyone can just completely switch to them. A hybrid application profile with VMs and containers is going to be the norm as ppl learn what works best for containers.

@dahowlett Bah!

@JuanLage Do you think that Openstack is going to be as big as we think or is the industry drinking its' own kool aid? I was having a twitter debate on this last night with a naysayer. share your views

@jeremy_oakey agreed. And for existing apps (and some new ones) new forms to discover, map and enforce the application flows will be required too.

OpenStack storage still doesn't have a clear winner yet.
Storage for Containers is just beginning to evolve. Huge opportunity for disruptive companies.

@dahowlett It's getting easier and there are tested solutions already out there deploying prod workloads at scale. It definitely is a crawl, walk, run process for each organization to really embrace what a hybrid cloud strategy can do for them.

it is interesting ... only a year ago OpenStack looked huge, but many new buildouts focused on PaaS may as well bypass it altogether and go with Kubernetes or Mesos or a combination. Another hard question!!! :-)

I definitely believe OpenStack is only going to continue to get bigger and easier to work with.

I worry openstack is relegated to only SPs and large enterprise, at least until folks like @platform9 and others make it easy to adopt.

Use @ to replyJohn -OpenStack still remains a SP segment favorite like NFVs

I am in agreement, no clear winner yet in Storage, and same for networking/SDN. Lots of opportunity for vendors. In SDN specifically, ACI approach with GBP is generating lots of interest. Applicable to non-OpenStack environments as well :-)

@lauren The assumption here is that large cos can pivot around their DC contracts. That's not easy without hard nosed negotiations and clear payback. I'd argue it's almost a non sequitur because of timelines involved and velocity of development.

@kix1979 agreed that the complexity to deploy and manage has to get simpler with anything, including openstack. vSphere went through this as well and now is trusted by many for Tier1 applications so it will happen (it or the next platform)

Openstack is it unless there is a better alternative!

@malhoit They're saying there should be their there? ;)

Another comment on SDN for DevOps....A continuing challenge in DevOps is making sure continuous application changes don't break secure ascess rules, throughput and latency. Policy based SDN solves this.

@SandeepatCisco very much in agreement. +1 :-)

@SandeepatCisco Yes and the security policy framework is the most lagging area of maturity it seems for now. Building up the ACI network stack for an app is there but how to get the InfoSec needs into every aspect still needs some work. Cisco is on it

I've spoken to dozens of enterprises and cloud service providers using Openstack. The key challenge is getting the operational support expertise to run it. But 75% of large accounts I've spoken to are working on it.

First step to managing software defined is not to confuse software defined = software only!

the main thing that I heard in the keynote was the notion of making the on-prem and off-prem transparent. Unification was a key message.

As Jeremy said, there was a nice focus on apps at the keynote. Also on the idea of Run/Build/Deliver/Secure any app

I think we can all agree it's good that we're heading towards and application centric view of the data center

It was definitely a kool-aid injection. I see lots of work to truely unify the infrastructure

@malhoit applications are the new disruption forces bc that is what all customer are looking to do so the #infra has to be smarter

Apps have been the heart of our mission with SDN. That's why we called it Application Centric Infrastructure. It's great to talk about customer challenges with Apps

The overall focus of cloud technologies to enable applications is good to see. There are many creative solutions out there that are maturing nicely to provide more agile and secure use of cloud, both public and private

@malhoit so YES on application centric focus; that is a winning strategy

And it's not only about virtual machines, it's about containers, bare metal, the entire data center needs to be policy driven.

@malhoit It's something we've been advocating for at CliQr for a while and using that application focus to instruct great infrastructure like Cisco ACI on how the network should behave starts to provide the promise of cloud technologies.

@jeremy_oakey the moving workloads is huge; the tooling and architectures need to be consistent across both private & public is that I hear from customers. How? That's another big question

I think we got drenched in kool-aid this morning. Not sure there was much meat on the bones.

I don't see how that's possible. The fundamentals are different.

@dahowlett yes an "injection" for sure; the market is voting for hybrid but the underlying infra needs to be solidified fast imho

that can seem difficult indeed. An application profile or blueprint that can contain the definition of the application stack, how to deploy it and manage it makes it work. Then deploying it is a business decision - data locality, security, etc.

Use @ to replythis is very useful guys - I am doing a presentation today at cisco theater at 5 PM, on how L4-L7 NW/Security services can be inserted in ACI's policy framework

Not sure the market is voting, more like it doesn't have app choice or need.

@dahowlett Dennis what is you're take on customer needs to make Hybrid a reality

and speed up application delivery

I'm only going to do this as a priority IF there are massive savings to be had.

@dahowlett a. Similar to Cisco IT, customers can leverage ACI to achieve combined 41.0% savings on initial capex costs and IT staff costs related to technology provisioning and network operations over three years

@dahowlett IT staff will reduce the time it spends on areas such as datacenter access, access control, and load balancing requests by an average of 58.1%

Cisco has a large number of service providers deploying Cisco Cloud Architecture which uses application policy as a foundation to automate and control infrastructure. Enterprises can take advantage is Cisco powered clouds for their private cloud

a) Kit was most interesting to me. b) candid message was - for cloud native we need a new "devops" friendly platform (photon). That's vmware taking its medicine.

great point! ... I am sure at a first glance it doesn't look any easier. But I think those who are willing to experiment and learn new approaches will make inroads into making their lives easier.

I think what's important is that we try to give customers the ability to use the same automation and orchestration tools that they're already using in other parts of their infrastructure

Absolutely more complex. CIOs are seeing stories of other's successes and wanting that for their business needs. That's our goal is to make the complex seem easier so businesses can focus on their core. Any takers on that goal with me?!

@JuanLage +1 absolutely. Creating a culture of experimentation, and building up the needed safety net. That's what DevOps means to me and will help orgs find ways to innovate around new tech.

Use @ to replyagree with shashi - even with unified management etc, there too many tools

depends on your role? i think it's huge oppty bc the explosion in tool is really strong right now in cloud

Some customers say choosing is difficult. Others want to customize. With Opensource it becomes both easy and difficult at the same time...:-)

@jeremy_oakey I see this a lot with #ACI customers. At first they try to run it like they ran networking before (which is possible), once they experiment, they see they can do a lot more with less! :-)

if you're hamstrung with older tooling you're foobar

@RaviBala8 We haven't reached that "single pane of glass" yet that everyone is asking for. Plenty of opportunity to keep maturing the tools. Customers are definitely retooling their organizations to support 100% virtualization, cloud and SDDC environment

@netkirhaving the tools is flexible though

SPoG is a myth and no one really wants one

true, there's no one-size-fits-all. Again back at #ACI, it's great that some customers can use it simply through GUI or NX-OS CLI. Others decide to program to the REST API and do a lot more on their own ...

. @netkiran having the biggest and most tools isn't always the easier way bc it gets complex; having abstraction layer with unified onprem and cloud requires consistent tooling that's easy to deploy, run, and manage; moreover the developers need to adopt

example - in a VMware context vCenter plugin/vsphere client with APIC comes handy for VM admin

@netkiranwhen you integrate F5 BIG IP, BIG IQ etc with APIC, APIC pretty much alone suffices

@JuanLage We see that a ton with #CliQr and #ACI as well. Define the application and let it program the infrastructure and all the magic that happens underneath just doesn't need to be known at the level of the past. The network is still critical though

@jeremy_oakey I know, #CliQr and #ACI are a perfect fit. Policy becomes easy to insert/remove, always updated with app requirement. Very impressed with the #CliQr solution! :-)

CliQr looks awesome

@kix1979 I think there are different viewers so agree there is no one pane that meets every need. There will likely never be just one for an entire Enterprise.

@CrowdCaptain We are at booth 801 so come say hi and see demos of our common use cases - very VMware supporting of course.