VCF: Application Virtual Networks

from the Hydra High Council Oct 8th 2019

Overhearing two colleagues discuss the "avian" addition to the new 3.9.1 version of VMware Cloud Foundation got me curious. Birds?? Turns out, they were talking about AVN, Application Virtual Networks.

One step closer to NSX-T

In this VCF version, a change to the Management Domain is setting the stage for NSX-T to become a migration option sometime down the road. Currently (even in this updated version) there is no way to directly migrate from NSX-v to NSX-T. But with the addition of AVNs in the VCF Management Domain, VMware is moving the chess pieces in place to not only make the upgrade to NSX-T a future possibility, but to add even more flexibility when it comes to mobility as a whole, promoting a seamless integration of on-prem and off-prem environments.

VCF Management Domain (top portion in green)

Decoupling

AVNs are specialized overlay networks that support applications running in the VCF Management Domain. The idea is to truly decouple hardware from the Software Defined Network, making the management components easily portable. For example, to add vRNI, you would normally need to create VLAN-backed PortGroups to deal with the hardware side of things. AVNs make this step unnecessary.

Universal Virtual Wires

AVNs provide an SDN topology for the VCF management applications and are built on NSX, and therefore all management applications have NSX features available to them. With AVNs in place, any VMs added to the Management Domain are automatically connected to the AVN's universal virtual wires.

Due to the more defined decoupling, the AVN design allows for SDDC management components to be moved to another location easily. The improved mobility is not only a good fit for disaster recovery, it also simplifies the integration with cloud providers, making it easier for you to move between on-prem and off-prem environments.