Deploying vSphere with Kubernetes via VCF 4.0

Manish Jha

In this post I will walk through how to deploy a Kubernetes cluster in a workload domain in VCF. This is  a new feature that is introduced in VCF 4.0. vSphere with Kubernetes is also known as Project Pacific and Cormac Hogan did a great job in explaining nuances of Kubernetes in his Article

Before deploying a Kubernetes cluster, there are few prerequisites that must be met:

1: A NSX-T backed workload domain deployed.

2: Dedicated Edge Cluster deployed for workload domain. I have covered steps of deploying edge cluster Here

3: All Esxi hosts that are part of workload domain are licensed with “VMware vSphere 7 Enterprise Plus with Add-on for Kubernetes” license.

4: Subnets for Kubernetes cluster egress/ingress traffic created on your ToR.

Once above prerequisites, we are good to go with deployment. Let’s jump into lab and walk through deployment steps.

To deploy Kubernetes cluster, login to SDDC Manager and navigate to Home > Solutions.… Read More

How To Safely Remove Edge Cluster from Workload Domain in VCF

Manish Jha

Recently I deployed an edge cluster in my lab for NSX-T based workload domain. In VCF 4.0, a new feature was added for automated deployment of edge cluster. If you haven’t tried this yet, you can follow my previous Post to learn more about this.

My edge cluster encountered some routing issues because of incorrect BGP information passed during edge cluster deployment workflow and I was looking for how to remove it cleanly from sddc manager. 

While searching on internet, I came across VMware KB-78635 which lists the instructions of doing so. In this post I will walk through steps from the above KB.

Edge Cluster removal workflow is not baked into sddc manager yet and is carried out by python scripts provided by VMware. May be in next release of VCF, we will see this option added to sddc manager 😉

Edge cluster python script is named “edge_cluster_cleaner” and you will find this script as tar file in attachment section of KB-78635.… Read More

Automated NSX-T Edge Cluster Deployment in VCF 4.0

Manish Jha

NSX-T integration with VCF is there for quite some time. Till VCF 3.9, SDDC Manager was not deploying NSX-T edge cluster in workload domains as part of VI WLD creation. Process of edge cluster deployment was manual and very well documented Here

Also this article by Cormac Hogan is worth checking to understand things in greater details.

In VCF 4.0, edge cluster deployment task is automated and can be kicked directly from SDDC Manager itself. No more juggling around configuring various things in NSX-T.

Below are high level steps for Automated Edge Cluster Deployment in VCF 4.0.

Step 1: Login to SDDC Manager and navigate to Workload Domains tab and click on environment where you want to deploy NSX-T Edge Cluster. 

Form Actions Menu, click on Add Edge Cluster 

WLD-EC02

Step 2: A list of prerequisites will pop up. Make sure your infrastructure has met all these requirements before moving ahead.

Word of caution here, make sure VLAN used for Host and Edge TEP’s are different.… Read More

Change NSX-T Deployment Form Factor in VCF

Manish Jha

Recently while playing with VCF, I noticed one annoying thing about NSX-T deployment for workload domain. By default NSX-T managers are deployed in large form factor with 48 GB of memory and all 48 GB reserved.

Also SDDC Manager checks for 144 GB of free memory at custer level where NSX-T managers will be deployed.

For production environments this setup works fine as we have plenty of resources, but for Lab/POC purpose 48 GB per node seems too big in my opinion (I am open to discussion on this)

In this post we will learn how to deploy NSX-T for workload domains with custom size. 

NSX-T deployment form factor can be controlled via /opt/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/config/application-prod.properties file. To use custom form factor, login to sddc manager as root user and edit this file to add below properties:

… Read More

How to Install App Launchpad for VMware Cloud Director

Manish Jha

App launchpad is one of the newest features that enhance the capabilities of VMware Cloud Director. This functionality will make life easier for tenants by allowing them to run applications with a few clicks.

In this post, I will walk through the steps of installing & configuring VMware App Launchpad. But before we dive into the lab, let’s understand the basics of App Launchpad.

VMware App Launchpad Introduction

App Launchpad is a VMware Cloud Director service extension that service providers can use to create and publish catalogs of deployment-ready applications. Tenant users can then deploy the applications with a single click.

  • App Launchpad supports applications from the Bitnami applications catalog that is available in the VMware Cloud Marketplace. 
  • You can create catalogs of your custom, in-house applications and configure App Launchpad to work with these catalogs.

App Launchpad Architecture

The below image taken from VMware documentation illustrates the high-level architecture of App Launchpad.… Read More

What’s New in VMware Cloud Director 10.1

Manish Jha

With the release of v10.1 yesterday, vCloud Director has been rebranded to VMware Cloud Director. In this post I will cover what does Cloud Director brings to the table.

1: vCloud Director Rebranding: Upon logging into Cloud Director UI, you will no longer see the ‘v’ of vCloud Director. vCD  has been rebranded to VMware Cloud Director.

vmware cloud director

2: RIP Flex UI: Flex UI is no longer available in Cloud Director. In vCD 10.0, flex UI was disabled by default and if needed, it can be enabled back with cell-management-tool utility.

Note: Although the same command works in 10.1 also as shown below

But even after running this command, if you try to login to flash client, you will see a page not found error.… Read More

VMware Cloud Director-What’s New-NSX-T UI Enhancements

Manish Jha

With the release of VMware Cloud Director (Previously vCloud Director), a lot of NSX-T related UI enhancements are added. In this post I will walk through some of them.

Dedicated External Networks

With Cloud Director 10.1, an edge gateway can be provisioned with a dedicated external network. In this configuration, there is a one-to-one relationship between the external network and the edge gateway, and no other edge gateways can connect to this external network.

Note: Provider creates a T0 gateway within NSX-T and add it to Cloud Director as an external network. Once T0 is added, provider could convert an existing org gateway (T1) to this new dedicated T0, or create a new org gateway with Dedicated External Network option selected.

vCD-NSX-06

BGP and Route Advertisement

BGP peering  & Route Advertisement functionalities are added on Edge Gateway UI.

Route Advertisement

You can decide which of the network subnets that are attached to org gateway will be advertised to the dedicated external network.… Read More

Create vCAV Replication Policies via API

Manish Jha

Few days back I wrote a post on how to create Replication policies in vCloud Availability via GUI. In this post I will walk through steps of creating the same via API.

Below are high level steps of API workflow.

1: Get Auth Token

2: Create a New Replication Policy

Response Output: Make a note of the id of the policy from the response output.… Read More

How To Unregister vCAV 3.5 Plugin from vCenter

Manish Jha

Recently while working in lab, I came across situation where I had to remove the vCloud Availability 3.5 plugin from vCenter. To remove plugins from vCenter, we usually employ mob for this task, but removing the vCAV plugin follow different path. In this post I will walk through steps of doing the same.

Login to your vcsa appliance over SSH and execute following commands:

1: List vCAV plugin registrations in the vCenter Server Lookup service

Make a note of the Service ID from the output

2: Unregister vCAV plugin from the vCenter Lookup service, by providing the SSO credentials and using the Service Id fetched from  previous command.

3: Re run command from step 1 to verify vCAV plugin has been unregistered from lookup service. … Read More

Upgrading vCloud Availability From 3.0 to 3.5

Manish Jha

In this post I will walk through steps of upgrading vCloud Availability deployment upgrade from version 3.0 to 3.5.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series, I would recommend reading them from below links:

1: vCAV 3.0-Provider Setup

2: vCAV 3.0-Replication Policies

3: vCAV 3.0-Tenant Setup

vCloud Availability upgrade can be performed via various methods (CLI & UI). These methods are very well documented Here 

Upgrading vCloud Availability in the Cloud

Before upgrading vCAV in service provider side, we need to ensure that environment is configured as per Pre-Upgrade requirement.

vCloud Availability Upgrade Sequence

For a multi site vCloud Availability deployment, upgrade the sites in the following order:

  • Upgrade all vCloud Availability appliances in the local cloud site.
  • Upgrade all vCloud Availability appliances in remote cloud sites.
  • Upgrade all vCloud Availability On-Premises Appliance nodes.

In a vCloud Availability cloud site, upgrade all the appliances in following sequence:

  • Upgrade the vCloud Availability Cloud Replication Management Appliance.
… Read More