Welcome to part 5 of the VCF-9 series. The previous post in this series discussed the new method of deploying the Edge cluster and the transit gateway. In this post, I will discuss the process of commissioning an ESXi host.
If you are not following along, I encourage you to read the earlier parts of this series from the links below:
1: VCF-9 Architecture & Deployment Models
4: NSX Edge Cluster Deployment
In the VCF world, host commissioning refers to the process of adding physical servers (with ESXi installed) to the SDDC Manager inventory to create a pool of available capacity for workload domains and clusters. Starting with VCF-9, VMware has announced the deprecation of the SDDC manager and moved the majority of the day-1 & day-2 configurations to VCF operations. As part of this change, the process of ESXi host commissioning has also changed, and this feature has been moved to the vCenter server UI.
In VCF-9, ESXi host commissioning is performed through the global inventory object in the vCenter server. You must commission ESX hosts before you can use them to create a new workload domain or add them to an existing VCF domain.
Here’s a breakdown of the host commissioning process in VCF 9:
Step 1: In the vCenter UI, navigate to Global Inventory Lists > Hosts.
Navigate to the Unassigned Hosts tab and click Commission Hosts
Review the host commission checklist and ensure you have met all prerequisites. Once completed, click Proceed.
You have two choices for host commission:
- Manual Addition: You can add hosts individually by providing the fully qualified host name, storage type (e.g., vSAN), network pool, and root user credentials.
- Bulk Import: You can import hosts in bulk by providing the same information in a JSON file.
For bulk import, select the import option and upload the JSON file containing the host details.
Click upload to start the host commission process.
After the ESXi hosts are added, click “Confirm all Finger Prints” to validate the SHA thumbprint of the host.
Clicking on the “Validate All” button will validate the host thumbprint, and the validation status shows valid.
Review the host details and click Commission to start the process.
Wait for the process to complete. The configuration status changes to “Active” on successful host commissioning. The hosts are now ready to be consumed for creating a workload domain or adding a cluster to an existing workload domain.
The commissioning process was fairly quick, and in my lab it just took 2 minutes for the process to complete.
And that’s it for this post. In the next post of this series, I will discuss workload domain deployment. Stay tuned!!!
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