Network Native

While working at VMware I learned the value of capturing packets inside of an ESXi hypervisor. I used packet capture so frequently I memorized the commands. Let me explain the basics of ESXi packet capture in this post. A network engineer's most precise tool to figure out what is happening in the network is always going to be a packet capture. Fortunately, ESXi hypervisors make this easy. My baseline of comparison? Packet capturing on physical networking infrastructure, such as a Cisco switch. With Cisco, the process entails creating a monitor port, connecting a cable to the switch, attaching a computer with a packet sniffer and finally, collecting and analyzing the packets with an application such as Wireshark. With ESXi packet capturing, the most cumbersome aspect is remembering the incredibly long commands! My pcap (packet capture) commands can be referenced in VMware's official documentation: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-703-net...

I was there for my second DEFCON and it was AMAZING! DEFCON 30 was on August 11th through August 14 of 2022. Here are my thoughts on what made it worthwhile for me. DEFCON brings into focus a fracture in my life. I don't think I'm the only one who experiences this fracture. For the people who know me IRL (in real life), it requires some explaining to express what DEFCON is. For most of the people that I personally know, I simply state that DEFCON a tech conference in Las Vegas. For someone not interested or immersed in technology, who would know the difference between a tech conference and a hacker conference? Does it even matter?  Herein lies the reason why DEFCON has appeal for me. Socializing with other tech oriented people is the primary reason I attend DEFCON. There is a certain frustration a person experiences when  you don't have peers who understand or relate to your passions or interests. DEFCON is a 4 day catharsis for said frustration. There IS a difference betwe...

In this post, I will discuss NSX vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs). When installing NSX, one must perform the action of "preparing" the ESXi host. To prepare the host, it means install the requisite NSX VIBs on the ESXi host. If you're coming from a purely networking background, you might be wondering, "What is a VIB"? VIBs are basically drivers, or bundles of software, that give ESXi enhanced or distinct software abilities. Even in cases where NSX is not installed, ESXi hosts will have VIBs installed to perform its day-to-day server virtualization functions.   Non-NSX VIBs List VIBs Command: esxcli software vib list To give the ESXi host NSX capabilities such as Network Function Virtualization, NSX specific VIBs must be installed on the host. During host preparation, the VIBs are pushed from the NSX-T Manager to the host. Lets take a look at those vibs and I'll give a description of what each of them do. You'll notice in the image below that the NSX V...

NSX-T is a vast product. On this occasion I want to take a crack at explaining NSX-T host preparation in a visually comprehensible manner. Host prep is the process where NSX-T manager will connect with your ESXi hosts and install VIBS, or VMware proprietary software packages (drivers). These vibs allow your hypervisor to participate in overlay networking, distributed firewall and a slew of other NSX-T features. After the NSX manager is installed and you have registered it with vCenter Server, host preparation is the next step. Not mentioned here are the steps to prepare a KVM host. Below: NSX-T U.I. showing successful registration with vCenter For this blog post, I'm going to use a nested ESXi host in my home lab. It has 3 vNic which are perceived as vmnics by the nested ESXi instance: Through the NSX-T UI, the unprepared ESXi host look like this: At this point, you could choose to apply a transport node profile, but to keep it simple we're not going to do that. Select the host...