When you are planning for a vCF deployment, you need lot and lot of IP’s and DNS records.
In my environment I have an AD integrated DNS running on MS 2012 R2.
If you are only planning on deploying the Management Workload Domain in your environment you only need to create the forward and reverse lookup records for Management Workload Domain. If Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain will be introduced in future then you need to plan the DNS records accordingly.
Note: Please see this article for comprehensive list of DNS requirement for vCF deployment.
Below is the list of DNS records that I created in my environment:
| Workload Domain | Hostname | IP Address |
| Management | vcfesx01 | 172.20.31.101 |
| Management | vcfesx02 | 172.20.31.102 |
| Management | vcfesx03 | 172.20.31.103 |
| Management | vcfesx04 | 172.20.31.104 |
| Management | vcf-psc01 | 172.20.31.105 |
| Management | vcf-psc02 | 172.20.31.106 |
| Management | vcf-mgmtvc | 172.20.31.107 |
| Management | vcf-mgmtnsx | 172.20.31.108 |
| Management | vcf-sddcmgr | 172.20.31.109 |
| Management | vcfvrli (iLB) | 172.20.31.110 |
| Management | vcf-vrli01 | 172.20.31.111 |
| Management | vcf-vrli02 | 172.20.31.112 |
| Management | vcf-vrli03 | 172.20.31.113 |
| Virtual Infrastructure | wld-esxi01 | 172.20.31.165 |
| Virtual Infrastructure | wld-esxi02 | 172.20.31.166 |
| Virtual Infrastructure | wld-esxi03 | 172.20.31.167 |
| Virtual Infrastructure | vcf-wldvc01 | 172.20.31.168 |
| Virtual Infrastructure | vcf-wldnsx01 | 172.20.31.169 |
| NA | vcf (cloud builder appliance) | 172.20.31.100 |
| NA | vcf-lcm | 172.20.31.118 |
Note: If you are planning to deploy vRealize and Horizon infrastructure using vCF, you need to create additional records as per product DNS requirement.
IP Pools
IP pools are needed to configure vMotion network, vSAN network etc during SDDC bring up process. Typically you need to have pool of IP’s reserved for following:
- vMotion pool for Esxi hosts in Management Domain and VI Workload Domain.
- vSAN pool for Esxi hosts in Management Domain and VI Workload Domain.
- NSX controller pool in Management Domain and VI Workload Domain.
Here is how the IP pools looks like in my environment:
| Pool Type | Pool Start Address | Pool End Address |
| NSX-CTLR Pool (Mgmt) | 172.20.31.114 | 172.20.31.116 |
| vMotion-Pool (Mgmt) | 172.20.31.125 | 172.20.31.128 |
| vSAN-Pool (Mgmt) | 172.20.31.129 | 172.20.31.132 |
| Wld-vMotion-Pool | 172.20.31.169 | 172.20.31.171 |
| Wld-vSAN-Pool | 172.20.31.172 | 172.20.31.174 |
| NSX-CTLR Pool (WLD) | 172.20.31.175 | 172.20.31.177 |
Note: Ideally its better to have your mgmt, vMotion, vSAN networks backed by different VLAN’s. In my lab I had some issues when trying to use IP’s from different VLAN’s, so I put everything on same L2 network.
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