VeloCloud is a leading SD-WAN product which was procured by VMware 2 years ago and has since been rebranded VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud. VeloCloud along with Viptela were the first pure players which really kick started the SD-WAN revolution so its no surprise really that both were scooped up by VMware and Cisco respectively.
Note. For background info on VeloCloud please read my Part 1 blog.
Cisco’s purchase of Viptela was a no-brainer with Cisco’s I-WAN effort not really making the cut but VMware’s purchase of VeloCloud seemed odd to me at the time. What is the virtualization giant going to do with a WAN product? Turns out it was a great purchase. VeloCloud comes as a hardware or virtual appliance and is supported on Azure, AWS and GCP. VMware have now partnered with all three of these public cloud providers enabling VMware customers to move their virtual machine workloads from on-premise to the cloud and also between cloud providers, enabling customers to optimize workloads. And what can you use as the transit mechanism for this? Yep, you’ve guessed it, VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud.
The key advantages of using SD-WAN and the Internet as transit when you are moving workloads to the cloud are:
- Single WAN platform – Using SD-WAN you have one platform to manage as opposed to using a combination of products, VPNs and circuits (e.g. expressroute and direct connect) which often don’t interoperate. This also creates a routing nightmare with a mix of dynamic and static routing and often manual intervention. Using SD-WAN means you have any-to-any connectivity (Mesh VPN) between all your sites and cloud environments, simplifying your WAN.
- Time to Deliver – One benefit I have seen first hand of using SD-WAN and the Internet as transit is that when I have introduced a new cloud region, for example in Azure, I have deployed a virtual VeloCloud Edge in the new VNET and within minutes the VNET is part of my VPN overlay and routable from any site and cloud environment. It finally feels like you can deploy a network as easily as you have been able to deploy virtual machines for all these years.
- Multi Cloud Strategy – If you are planning on a multi-cloud strategy and by this i mean multiple public cloud providers and potentially private cloud in the mix then it really doesn’t make sense to use expressroute or direct connect circuits. The Internet is the next corporate network. Wedding yourself to your MPLS network/provider by installing expressroute or direct connect circuits shouldn’t even be entertained in most instances (there are always exceptions).
- Internet is the next corporate network – Now if you have already started using Software as a Service such as Office 365 then you have already started to adopt this premise. If you are using a mixture of on-premise, SaaS and IaaS then using the Internet as your corporate network starts to make sense as the balance starts to shift as you migrate applications from your on-premise data centres to the cloud. SD-WAN is an enabler to use the Internet as your corporate network by securing your sites and enabling connectivity between them and your cloud environments. Want proof? You don’t see Service Providers investing in MPLS anymore they are partnering with VeloCloud and Viptela, among others, to provide managed SD-WAN solutions.
Using VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud has enabled me to design solutions which are optimal for hybrid and mutli cloud deployments and deliver real business and technical benefits. For more information about why SD-WAN and vendor selection please see my other blogs.
Alex
Network Jigsaw 