VMware overview

The Fabric Services System integrates with VMware vSphere to provide fabric level application networks for VMware Virtual Machines. The Connect integration leverages the VMware vSphere distributed vSwitch architecture to support managing the fabric directly from VMware vCenter and make the fabric respond to the networking needs of the environment.

It provides the following advantages and capabilities:

  • Direct integration into the network management workflow of VMware vCenter.
  • The use of the common distributed vSwitches and Port Groups for both regular Virtual Machine NICs as well as SR-IOV use cases.
  • Automatic provisioning of the fabric based on where the Virtual Machines need the connectivity.
  • Support advanced workflows through the Fabric Service System Managed solution. Including for VNF use cases with features like QoS, ACLs, BGP PE-CE, ...
  • Interconnectivity between different cloud environments, allowing for flexible network configurations.

VMware architecture

The Fabric Services System introduces a new component in a VMware vSphere environment to allow the management of the SR Linux based fabric through VMware vCenter. Below is an overview of the architecture.

Figure 1. VMware architecture

The Connect VMware vSphere plugin

The Connect VMware vSphere plugin is a micro-service which is deployed inside the Fabric Services System environment itself. After deploying the plugin itself, connections to different VMware vCenter environments can be set up through the creation of Deployments within the plugin. This is done through the Connect Service API.

Once a VMware Plugin has been setup to a VMware vCenter environment, it will connect to that vCenter and listen for events for the following objects in VMware vCenter:

  • Distributed vSwitch management
  • Port Group management
  • Host to dVS associations
  • SR-IOV Configuration
  • SR-IOV enabled Virtual Machine boot and shutdown

The plugin only uses a read-only user for these activities.

Note:

The Connect VMware vSphere plugin supports up to a maximum of 2 different VMware vCenter deployments. This will be increased in the future.