Those who are familiar with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) are aware that deploying the management domain requires a minimum of 4 ESXi hosts. In a production environment, this is not a problem, but in resource-crunched Lab/PoC environments, it is very difficult to deploy the full-fledged management domain.

In this blog post, I am going to demonstrate how to deploy a VCF management domain with just a single ESXi host in a nested lab. This tidbit will be very helpful for the folks who want to test VCF but don’t have adequate resources available in the lab.

I am following VCF 5.1.1 BOM for my deployment. I will cover resource requirements as well as touch base on the nested ESXi configuration. Let’s get started!!!

Nested ESXi Configuration

1: Resource Allocation

The nested ESXi was deployed with 96 GB Memory and 14 CPUs, 2 network adapters, and 1000 GB SSD storage. Although 96 GB is a bit less especially if you plan to deploy NSX Edges later after the SDDC bringup.… Read More

Tasks in VCF might fail because one or more subtasks within the primary task have failed. Some of these tasks are not retriable and remain in a lingering state in the SDDC Manager dashboard.

The command provided in this blog post will help you in clearing out such tasks from the dashboard.

Step 1: Fetch the failed task ID from the SDDC manager interface.

Click on the failed task and notice the URL change in the browser. The task id is displayed in the URL itself.

Make a note of the task id.

Alternatively, you can run the below API call directly from the SDDC Manager VM.

The output of this API call returns a list of the tasks. You can filter the failed tasks and get the task ID.

Step 2: Delete the failed task

Execute the below API call and it will delete the failed task from the SDDC Manager dashboard.… Read More

In this post, I’ll go over a few tips/tricks that you may use throughout your VCF lab deployment to get the most out of this fantastic tool.

Tip 1: Bring down lab resource utilization

Most of us, I believe, use VCF as a nested lab, and because VCF requires a lot of computing power, this is one area that we struggle with. Because of the limited resources available, a full-fledged deployment is not always practicable. NSX-T nodes, in my experience, are the most problematic component. VCF deploys several NSX-T nodes and each NSX-T requires a lot of resources. 

You can limit the number of NSX-T nodes in both the management and workload domains by following the below instructions:

• Deploy VCF Management Domain with Single NSX-T Node
• Deploy Workload Domain with Single NSX-T Node in Small form factor

Step 1: SSH into SDDC Manager using the vcf user and switch to root user by running the command: su – root

Step 2: Modify application-prod.properties… Read More

I recently downloaded the image bundles for vRealize components while working in my newly deployed VCF 4.4 environment, not realizing that SDDC Manager does not orchestrate the deployment of any vRealize suite component except the vRealize Suite Life-Cycle Manager. I came across a useful out-of-the-box SDDC Manager feature when looking for a way to clean out the unneeded image bundles.

The process outlined in this post will assist you in clearing out any partially downloaded image bundles or unnecessary bundles that SDDC Manager is not currently using. 

Step 1: SSH into SDDC Manager using the vcf user and switch to root user by running the command: su – root

Step 2: Grab the unwanted image bundle id from UI

Step3: Run the following command to clean up the unwanted bundle

where bundle_id is the Id of the unwanted bundle

Example:

This article will show you how to set up a VCF Management domain with just one NSX-T manager. When there is a resource constraint, such as in a lab environment, this suggestion will be useful for lowering the management domain footprint.

The below steps outline the process of deploying an SDDC with one NSX-T node.

Step 1: Fill in all the parameters in the VCF configuration workbook spreadsheet.

Step 2: Transfer the spreadsheet to the cloud builder VM using WinSCP or a similar utility. 

Step 3: Use the following command to convert the spreadsheet to the json format

Where VCF-4.4.xlsx is the name of my spreadsheet. Change the name of the file to reflect your environment.… Read More