u/bitmafi

I like Netbox, but it lacks features for visualizing SDN-based networks.

Which self hosted “source of truth” tool with a similar purpose to Netbox can handle SDN overlay segments that do not use VLAN IDs as identifiers?

SDNs in Cloud networks typically dont identify over a four digitic number, the typically have screen names and (U)UIDs in the background (NSX, OpenStack, Google Cloud?), alphanumeric VPC-IDs in AWS or Ressource IDs in Azure.

We are invested in VLANs (of course), EVPN-VXLAN, NSX, Openstacks Neutron and two of the big cloud providers and I'm looking for an IPAM/DCIM tool that meets all my requirements.

It would also be nice if this tool offered a way to connect overlay networks to the underlay (in the case of EVPN-VXLAN or in case of NSX on which transport zone its running).

If I remember correctly, ‘Transparent Page Sharing’ (TPS) was a feature introduced in ESXi 5.x and subsequently disabled by default in ESXi 6.x. TPS can deduplicate data in memory. VMware disabled inter-VM TPS due to potential security concerns relating to side-channel attacks. Today, it is only available by default within a single VM (intra-VM). It should still be possible to enable Inter-VM-TPS via the advanced host settings (true?).

ESXi 5 and 6, as well as the processors from that era, are now a bit outdated. But in an age of absurd amounts of RAM, more modern CPU technologies, and AI-based security analyses, it might make sense to reconsider this technology.

What is the current status regarding TPS? Is it still considered insecure? Do processor architectures play a role in these potential security issues?

Wouldn’t it make sense to revisit this topic and put appropriate measures in place to address it? In addition to memory tiering, this would be a measure that could possibly also be implemented on hosts that are not NVMe-ready.

Edit: I found this Knowledge Base article, which was supposedly last updated in 2025. However, the content covers ESXi 5, which is why I doubt that the information is still accurate today.

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=2080735

This is KB article describes the feature:

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/323624/additional-transparent-page-sharing-mana.html

The linked blog post was first published in 2015, so it's safe to assume that this information may no longer be accurate.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240614000022/http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2015/01/assess-the-performance-impact-of-the-security-change-in-transparent-page-sharing-behaviour.html

Each Summary page in vCenter contains several portlets. Is it possible to adjust or hack the size of these portlets?

It would be helpful if the “Notes,” “Related Object,” and “Tags” portlets would be adjustable in size. Sometimes the keys and values are too long and cause ugly line breaks.

vCenter is v8.0.3.

Is there any news regarding VCF 9.1 in relation to Cloud Director or alternative solutions?