VMware Cloud Foundation not only deploys SDDC but can be used to automate deployment of vRealize suite components such as vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager (vRSLCM), vRealize Log Insight, vRealize Operations and vRealize Automation. 

Before you can deploy vROPS/vRA or vRLI, you need to deploy vRSLCM using vCF. vCF can then trigger workflows and send requests via API to vRSLCM for taking care of deployment. 

In this post I will walk through steps of deploying both vRSLCM and vROPS.

To deploy vRSLCM, login to SDDC Manager and navigate to Home> Administration > vRealize Suite > vRealize Suite LifeCycle Manger and click on Deploy. 

Make sure you have met all the prerequisites before starting the deployment. 

Note: vRSLCM installation bundle should have downloaded from repository before performing this step. 

If all the prerequisites are in place, hit Begin button.

Configure network settings and hit Next.

Supply appliance admin/root password and specify the fqdn for vRSLCM. … Read More

When you spin up a brand new SDDC using VMware Cloud Foundation, minimum number of hosts that are needed in Management Domain and VI Domain are 4 & 3 respectively. You can scale up Management domain up to 8 hosts and VI domain to 64 hosts.

Before scaling up the workload domains, we need to commission the host first and add it to vCF inventory. To add new hosts to inventory, we need to create a new network pool or expand the default network pool created during bring-up.

Once network pool has been created, you can start commission of new hosts by navigating to SDDC-Manager > Hosts and click on “Commission Hosts” button

Once the host have been commissioned, it will appear under unassigned hosts with configuration status as Active.

Note: If a host is in error state because of issues encountered during host commission workflow, you need to de-commission host first and fix the issue and commission it back again. … Read More

Recently while playing with vCF 3.7.2 in my lab, I encountered an issue where SDDC Bringup process was halted because of NFS mount problem.

If you are experienced with vCF then you would be knowing that during bringup process, NFS share from the sddc manager vm is mounted as a NFS datastore across the management domain by the name “lcm-bundle-repo”.

On checking the hostd.log on Esxi host I saw following log entries

… Read More

In this post we will learn how to perform online upgrade of VMware Cloud Foundation from version 3.7.2 to 3.8.0. Although upgrade process is fairly simple and straight forward, it needs a bit of planning. 

As a best practice, it is always recommended to read the release notes & known issues in new version of product before performing upgrade. vCF 3.8 known issues are documented here

To perform online upgrade of vCF, your SDDC Manager appliance should have direct connectivity to internet or via a proxy server. 

Upgrade Prerequisites

Below screenshot from vCF documentation list the requirements that you should meet before attempting any upgrade operation.

vCF includes two types of bundles: Upgrade bundles & Install Bundles. To know more about these please read vCF official documentation

Upgrade Steps

To start the upgrade process we need to download the upgrade bundles. If you have configured repository settings and authorized my vmware account under Repository Settings, you will be notified about available updates.… Read More

In last post of this series, we learnt how to deploy a workload domain via SDDC Manager. In this post we will learn how to delete it. 

If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Physical/Virtual Infra Preparation

2: DNS and IP Pools Requirements for vCF 

3: Nested Esxi Host Deployment & Configuration

4: Deploying Management Domain aka SDDC Bringup

5: Workload Domain Deployment

To delete a workload domain, login to SDDC Manager and navigate to Inventory > Workload Domains and from Action menu select “Delete Domain“

Type the name of the domain and click on Delete Workload Domain button.

The delete workload domain workflow will be called. Wait for an hour or so for workflow to complete. Typically you will see below tasks getting executed during domain deletion. 

The host status will report as “Need Cleanup”.… Read More

In last post of this series we learnt the process of SDDC bringup aka Management Domain deployment. Also we verified we are able to login to SDDC manager. The management domain is integrated in SDDC manager by default during bringup process.

In this post I will walk through steps of deploying a Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain. If you are new to vCF and wondering what a workload domain is, then in simpler words its resource cluster where end users will provision their vm’s.

If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Physical/Virtual Infra Preparation

2: DNS and IP Pools Requirements for vCF 

3: Nested Esxi Host Deployment & Configuration

4: Deploying Management Domain aka SDDC Bringup

All the components that will be managing the VI workload domain are deployed in management domain for e.g vCSA, NSX etc. 

Note: NSX controllers for workload domain are deployed on Esxi hosts that are part of workload domain.… Read More

This is probably the most important post of this series. In this post we will learn how to bring up the SDDC i.e the Management Domain deployment.

Before we start the process we need to have the vCF 3.7.x cloud builder ova handy which can be downloaded from here

Cloud Builder deployment is pretty much straight forward.  Not covering the steps of deployment as nothing fancy there. Once the cloud builder vm boots up, open console of the vm to fetch the URL to access UI.

Download and Complete Deployment Parameter Sheet

Before we do anything in Cloud Builder UI, we need to prepare the deployment parameter sheet. This sheet can be downloaded from same location from where you downloaded the cloud builder ova.

There are various entries that needs to be filled up in the deployment sheet. This sheet needs to be filled very carefully as mistakes can lead to deployment failure or incorrect deployment.… Read More

In last Post of this series, I talked about the DNS records and IP Pools that should be in place for a successful vCF deployment.

In this post I will walk through steps needed to create nested Esxi and post installation steps.

Before we plan to create nested Esxi hosts or physical, we need to identify the build/version of Esxi and other components that are compatible with a given vCF version. VMware KB-52520 help you identify this.

For vCF 3.7 please refer to below table for build number needed. 

Once I had build info handy, I deployed 4 nested ESXi hosts for the management workload domain. These VMs were created with following specifications:

• 10 vCPUs
• 64 GB Memory
• 4 Hard disks (Thin Provisioned): 16 GB (Boot disk0), 100 GB (vSAN cache tier), 150 GB, 150 GB (vSAN capacity tier). 
• 2 VMXNET3 NICs connected to the same Portgroup
• Virtual hardware version 14 (compatibility: Esxi 6.7 or later during vm creation)
• Guest OS: Other
• Guest OS version: VMware ESXi 6.5 or later
• Expose hardware assisted virtualization to the guest OS enabled
• EFI firmware

Esxi Host Patching

I initially installed hosts with Esxi 6.7 U1 Build 10302608 (as i had this iso handy) and then patched it to Esxi 6.7 EP 09 Build 3644319.… Read More

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. … Read More