Technical Analysis — Study Material
Expert-level study material for the IaaS platform evaluation (OVE, Azure Local, Swisscom ESC replacing VMware). Each page includes technical deep-dives, ASCII architecture diagrams, candidate comparison tables, and SME discussion guides.
Virtualization (7 pages)
| # | Page | What You'll Learn |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Foundational Concepts | Type-1 vs Type-2 hypervisors, CPU virtualization extensions (VT-x/AMD-V), NUMA topology, CPU pinning, memory management (ballooning, KSM, huge pages), Secure Boot/vTPM, nested virtualization. The hardware foundations everything else builds on. |
| 02 | VMware vSphere / ESXi Baseline | ESXi VMkernel architecture, vCenter internals, DRS algorithm, HA/FT heartbeats, vMotion pre-copy flow, VMFS/NFS storage stack, distributed vSwitches, post-Broadcom licensing. The baseline every replacement is measured against. |
| 03 | Core Hypervisors | KVM ioctl API and vCPU execution loop, QEMU device emulation and virtio vring internals, Libvirt domain XML and its role in KubeVirt, Hyper-V partition model and VMBus. Head-to-head comparison of the engines behind each candidate. |
| 04 | KubeVirt & Kubernetes-Native Virtualization | KubeVirt architecture (virt-api, virt-controller, virt-handler, virt-launcher), CRDs (VirtualMachine, DataVolume), CDI image import, CRI-O execution chain, Kata Containers/MicroVMs. The core of OVE — how VMs become Kubernetes-native. |
| 05 | VM Lifecycle Management | Live migration algorithms (pre-copy/post-copy), snapshots and clones, VM templates, cloud-init/Ignition, resource quotas, affinity/anti-affinity rules, CPU/RAM hot-add, GPU passthrough/vGPU. Day-1 and Day-2 VM operations across all candidates. |
| 06 | Migration Tooling & Formats | VMDK/QCOW2/OVA format internals, virt-v2v driver injection, MTV warm/cold migration, Azure Migrate, migration factory model for 5,000+ VMs, wave planning, rollback strategy. The operational playbook for the migration itself. |
| 07 | Infrastructure as Code | Terraform providers (KubeVirt, Azure Local), Ansible playbooks, GitOps with ArgoCD, Crossplane, OpenTofu/BSL context. Complete working examples for provisioning and Day-2 automation on each platform. |
Storage (9 pages)
| # | Page | What You'll Learn |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Foundational Concepts | Block vs file vs object storage, LVM and device-mapper internals, RAID levels with rebuild risk analysis, thin provisioning, storage tiering, IOPS/throughput/latency benchmarking with fio. The primitives underlying all storage systems. |
| 02 | vSAN Baseline | vSAN data path (CLOM, DOM, LSOM, CMMDS, RDT), storage policies (SPBM, FTT), disk group layout, write buffer internals, failure handling with 60-minute absent timer, capacity overhead math (369 TB raw to 110 TB usable). What you're migrating from. |
| 03 | Storage Protocols | iSCSI PDU structure, NVMe-oF queue model and transport bindings, MPIO/ALUA path management, Fibre Channel zoning, NFSv3/v4 (pNFS, Kerberos), SMB3 multichannel. Protocol-level understanding for evaluating storage connectivity. |
| 04 | Storage Architectures | SAN fabric topology and zoning workflows, NAS scale-out vs single-controller, HCI/SDS replication mechanics, consistency models, distributed write path (11 steps), failure domains, SAN vs NAS vs HCI decision framework. |
| 05 | SDS Platforms | Ceph CRUSH algorithm, BlueStore internals, placement groups, Rook-Ceph operator, ODF deployment and DR modes, S2D Software Storage Bus and cache behavior, capacity planning for both. The head-to-head storage comparison for OVE vs Azure Local. |
| 06 | Kubernetes Storage Model | CSI architecture (controller/node plugins, gRPC calls, sidecars), PV/PVC binding and access modes, volume modes (filesystem vs block for VMs), StorageClasses with SPBM mapping, VolumeSnapshots. How Kubernetes consumes storage. |
| 07 | Data Protection & Operations | COW vs ROW snapshot mechanics, Ceph RBD mirroring, ODF Metro-DR/Regional-DR, S2D Storage Replica, LUKS/BitLocker encryption, Veeam VADP vs Kasten K10 (maturity gap analysis), FINMA compliance requirements. |
| 08 | Advanced Topics | S3 API, Ceph RGW architecture and multi-site replication, MinIO, NooBaa multi-cloud gateway, WORM/Object Lock for immutable backups, data locality (CRUSH affinity, S2D read-local), locality vs live migration tension. |
| 09 | NetApp ONTAP | WAFL filesystem internals, ONTAP data hierarchy (cluster/node/aggregate/volume/SVM), FlexClone, SnapMirror, MetroCluster, Trident CSI driver configuration and backends, volume import for migration. The external storage that persists across platform changes. |
Networking (9 pages)
| # | Page | What You'll Learn |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Foundational Concepts | VLANs and 802.1Q frame format, east-west vs north-south traffic, MTU/jumbo frames for overlays, all 7 bonding modes, DNS/DHCP for dynamic VM environments, SDN paradigm, BGP path selection, IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack. |
| 02 | NSX-T Baseline | NSX management/control/data planes, transport zones, GENEVE encapsulation, Tier-0/Tier-1 routing (SR/DR), Distributed Firewall categories and rule processing, micro-segmentation model, Traceflow, post-Broadcom licensing. The networking baseline. |
| 03 | Physical Connectivity & Redundancy | LACP/LACPDU fields and hash algorithms, LLDP topology discovery, MLAG/VPC/MC-LAG (generic multi-chassis LAG), ECMP in spine-leaf with resilient hashing and polarization avoidance. Physical link design for availability. |
| 04 | Physical Design & Management | Spine-leaf vs three-tier architecture, BGP ASN allocation, worked sizing example for 5,000 VMs (130 servers, 14 leafs, 6 spines), fiber types, DCIM (power, cooling, cabling, capacity planning). |
| 05 | Virtualization & Overlays | CNI specification, Multus multi-network for VM VLAN access, OVS flow processing pipeline, OVN full architecture (NB/SB databases, ovn-controller), VXLAN/GENEVE byte-level headers, ovn-trace debugging. OVE's networking foundation. |
| 06 | Advanced Data Paths | SR-IOV PF/VF architecture and PCIe mechanics, IOMMU DMA remapping and VFIO framework, DPDK poll-mode drivers and OVS-DPDK, performance comparison (virtio vs SR-IOV vs DPDK). When to bypass the software switch. |
| 07 | Routing & Security | Distributed virtual routing (OVN vs NSX), VRF isolation, eBPF architecture (verifier, XDP, maps), micro-segmentation models, Kubernetes NetworkPolicy and AdminNetworkPolicy (NSX DFW replacement), QoS/traffic shaping, IPsec/WireGuard VPN. |
| 08 | Platform-Specific Networking | Kubernetes networking model (Pod IPs, Services, kube-proxy modes), OpenShift Routes and HAProxy internals, MetalLB Layer 2 vs BGP mode for bare-metal load balancing. How external traffic reaches VMs in OVE. |
| 09 | Network Observability | NetFlow/IPFIX/sFlow, eBPF-based flow capture (Hubble, OpenShift Network Observability Operator), packet capture at every stack layer, troubleshooting methodology (8-layer decision tree), FINMA network logging compliance. |
Total: 25 pages, ~34,000 lines of expert-level study material.
Each page follows a consistent structure:
- Why This Matters — context for the evaluation
- Concepts — deep technical coverage with ASCII diagrams
- Candidate Comparison — VMware vs OVE vs Azure Local vs Swisscom ESC
- Key Takeaways — bullet summary
- Discussion Guide — pointed questions for SME and vendor conversations