Year: 2020

NSX-T 3.0 Series:Part 3- Transport Zones & Transport Node Profiles

Manish Jha

In last post of this series, we learnt about uplink profiles and some design considerations about how to configure them. In this post we will learn about Transport Zones and Transport Node Profiles and I walk through steps of configuring the same.

If you have landed directly on this post by mistake, I would recommend reading previous articles from this blog series:

1: NSX-T Management & Control Plane Setup

2: Uplink Profiles in NSX-T

Let’s get started.

What is Transport Zone?

A transport zone is a logical container which controls which Hosts/VM’s can participate in a particular network by limiting what logical switches that a host can see. 

Segments aka logical switches when created, are attached to a transport zone. One logical switch can only be attached to one transport zone. So the host/cluster which is part of X transport zone where Y logical segment is attached, will be able to see those segments. … Read More

NSX-T 3.0 Series:Part 2-Uplink Profiles

Manish Jha

In first post of this series, we learnt how to deploy NSX-T managers to form the management & control plane. In this post we will learn about uplink profiles and their use cases.

What is uplink Profile?

An uplink profile defines policies for the links from hypervisor hosts to NSX-T logical switches or from NSX Edge nodes to top-of-rack switches.

Uplink profiles allow you to consistently configure identical capabilities for network adapters across multiple hosts or nodes.

What settings we define on uplink profile?

The settings defined by uplink profiles include teaming policies, active/standby links, transport VLAN ID (ESXi TEP VLAN) and the MTU setting.

Before diving deep into uplink profiles, lets first discuss about various teaming policies that are available with uplink profiles. 

There are 3 teaming policies that can be configured while creating an uplink profile:

  • Failover Order: In this policy we specify one active uplink and one standby uplink.
… Read More

NSX-T 3.0 Series:Part 1-Management & Control Plane Setup

Manish Jha

NSX-T, since its birth has gained a lot of momentum in just couple of years and can be easily considered as VMware’s next generation product for multi-hypervisor environments, container deployments, and native workloads running in public cloud environments. NSX-T truly provides a scalable network virtualization and micro-segmentation platform.

This blog series is focussed more on implementation of NSX-T, rather than theoretical concepts. If you are new to NSX-T, I would highly recommend reading VMware’s official documentation

The first post of this series is focussed on deploying NSX-T Managers, which forms management & control plane setup, so its a good idea to have understanding of NSX-T Architecture before going ahead.

NSX-T manager can be deployed in following form factors:

nsx-t form factor

Note: Current version of NSX-T is 3.0.1 and can be downloaded from Here

In my lab I have a 4 node vSAN cluster and vSphere 7 installed. All my hosts are equipped with 2 10 physical NIC’s.… Read More

VDS Profiles in VCF for Multi-VDS SDDC Bringup

Manish Jha

Last week I tried my hands on latest release of VMware Cloud Foundation (4.0.1) and came across a cool feature where we can bringup a SDDC with Multi-VDS and Multi-NIC (more than 2) for traffic separation. This is one of the most asked feature request by VCF customers and finally its available.

What is VDS Profile and what problem it is solving?

VCF configuration workbook has now got a new configuration setting called “vSphere Distributed Switch Profile” and this setting is available under Hosts & Networks tab.

VDS profile allow you to deploy a SDDC with custom VDS design. In earlier versions of VCF, when you do a SDDC bringup, no matter how many physical nic’s your server’s has got, only 2 of them were being utilized in bringup.  The additional NIC’s were just laying waste there. 

Imagine you are a Cloud Service Provider, and you have invested heavily in servers with 4 or 6 NIC’s.… Read More

VCD Container Service Extension Series-Part 4: Tenant Onboarding & K8 Cluster Deployment

Manish Jha

In last post of this series, we learn how to install and integrate CSE plugin with VCD for easier management of Kubernetes container. In this post we will learn how tenants can leverage CSE plugin to deploy K8 clusters.

If you have landed directly on this post by mistake, I would recommend reading previous articles from this series.

1: Container Service Extension Introduction & Architecture

2: CSE Server Installation

3: CSE Plugin Integration With VCD

Onboarding Tenants

Before a tenant can start provisioning K8 cluster from CLI or UI (via CSE plugin), we need to enable the tenant to do so. This can be done directly from CSE server or login to any machine where vcd-cli utility is installed. To onboard a tenant, use following commands:

Note: These commands needs to be run as VCD system admin. 

# vcd login vcd.vstellar.local system admin -iw

# vcd right add -o <org-name> “{cse}:CSE NATIVE DEPLOY RIGHT”

Example: # vcd right add -o cse_org “{cse}:CSE NATIVE DEPLOY RIGHT”

Rights added to the Org ‘cse_org’

Note: At this point of time, if we run command vcd cse ovdc list, it will show us no K8 provider has been configured for the tenants.… Read More

VCD Container Service Extension Series-Part 3: CSE Plugin Integration With VCD

Manish Jha

In last post of this series, I explained how to set up CSE server. In this post we will look at steps of integrating CSE plugin in VMware Cloud Director, so that tenants can spin K8’s cluster from VCD portal.

If you have landed directly on this post by mistake, I would recommend reading previous articles from this series.

1: Container Service Extension Introduction & Architecture

2: CSE Server Installation

Latest and greatest version of CSE plugin can be downloaded from Here

CSE plugin installation is taken care by Cloud Provider. Post installation, provider can choose to publish plugin to all/specific tenants.

Login to VCD as system admin and navigate to Home > More > Plugins page. 

CSE-Plugin01

Click on upload button to start the wizard. Clicking on Select Plugin File allow you to browse to location where plugin file is downloaded.

CSE-Plugin02

Select the scope of publishing CSE plugin. Service provider can publish this plugin to all or subset of tenants. … Read More

VCD Container Service Extension Series-Part 1: Introduction & Architecture

Manish Jha

I was working on VMware Container Service Extension (CSE) for the last 2 weeks and it was a great learning opportunity for me. My CSE deployment did not go smoothly and I faced many issues with very little or no idea on how to fix them. But kudos to Joe Mann for lending a helping hand to fix all infra-related issues.

Through this blog series, I want to pen down my experience of working with CSE and the challenges which I encountered, and how those issues were resolved.

What is VMware Container Service Extension?

VMware Container Service is an extension to Cloud Director which enables cloud providers to offer Kubernetes-as-a-Service (on top of VCD) to their tenants. Kubernetes as a service helps tenants to quickly deploy the Kubernetes cluster in just a few clicks directly from the VCD portal. 

Cloud Providers upload customized Kubernetes templates in public catalogs which tenants leverage to deploy K8 clusters in self-contained vApps.… Read More

VCD Container Service Extension Series-Part 2: CSE Server Installation

Manish Jha

In first Post of this series, I talked about high level architecture of CSE infrastructure. I also discussed about various components that makes up the CSE platform. In this post I will walk through steps of installing & configuring CSE server.

CSE Installation Prerequisites

Before starting with CSE server installation, make sure following requirements are met:

1: VCD installed & configured: For Lab/POC environment, single node VCD installation is sufficient. For production environment 3 or more nodes (configured behind lb) is recommended.

2: Organization & Catalog for CSE: Dedicated Org created in VCD for CSE consumption. This org should have a Routed Org Network which has outbound connectivity to internet. Also this org should have a catalog created in advance. This catalog holds the K8’s ready vApp templates and will be shared to tenants for consumption.

3: AMQP broker configured in VCD: To extend VCD Public API, AMQP broker needs to be configured beforehand. … Read More

Reset Cloud Builder DB for a Fresh Bringup (VCF)

Manish Jha

Many of us might have encountered this situation where Cloud Builder UI doesn’t provide a back button after a successful SDDC  bringup. I have written a blog Post in the past where I showed the API method of resetting CB for a new bringup.

This post is an extension of my earlier post. Here I will demonstrate the database hack method to initiate a fresh bringup.

Step 1: Login to Cloud Builder via SSH and switch to root user.

Step 2: Connect to the Database

Step 3: Nuke the Bringup related tables

Refresh the CB UI and you will be returned to the checklist page.… Read More

Upgrading vROPs Tenant App for VCD via CLI

Manish Jha

In this post I will walk through how to upgrade vROPs Tenant App for Cloud Director via CLI.

Although upgrade can be performed directly from TA vami interface by logging in to https://<vrops-ta-fqdn>:5480/, but having knowledge of CLI is important specially when you are looking for automating the upgrade.

Note: Vami credentials of vROPs TA defaults to root/vmware.

Below are high level steps of upgrading the TA appliance via CLI.

Note: I have tested below steps to upgrade Tenant App from v2.3 to 2.4

Step 1: Enable SSH on TA: Login to TA appliance via vCenter console (credentials: root/vmware) and enable ssh by typing below commands:

# systemctl start sshd

# systemctl enable sshd

Step 2: Download TA Upgrade Package: Upgrade package for appliance can be downloaded from VMware Market Place under Resources tab.

vROPs-TA-MP

Extract the downloaded iso. We need to upload the content of iso on TA in next step

Step 3: Create Upgrade Repo on TA appliance: Connect to TA appliance over ssh and run following command:

# mkdir -p /data/repo

# chmod 755 -R repo/

Now upload the extracted content in /data/repo directory via winscp or similar utility.… Read More