Tag: sddc

Cloud Management, VCF, VCF Operations

Importing a vCenter 8.x as a Workload Domain into a VCF 9.0 Instance

sargonkhizeran

As customers are adopting VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, there is still backwards compatibility support for 8.x vCenter instances as well as licensing.

Please review Broadcom documentation on requirements and supported configurations; Import an Existing vCenter to Create a Workload Domain

Here is some information for my 8.x vCenter to be Imported

  • vCenter 8.0 U3g
  • 3 host cluster with DRS enabled
  • ESX hosts running 8.0 U3e
  • VDS with 2 uplinks attached from all hosts
  • NFS v3 backed datastore for principal storage (Synology)
  • vCenter appliance VM resides in the vCenter being imported
  • Cluster is using baselines for lifecycle (did this on purpose)
  • 4 DNS records & 3 IPs reserved an NSX 3 node cluster.

Since the vCenter is NOT connected to any NSX instance, a new NSX instance will be created.

The term ‘Import’ is used when the action is performed within VCF Operations. ‘Converge’ is used when using the VCF Installer.

The actions are performed within the VCF Operations 9 console.

From the VCF Operations home page go to Inventory >> select the Organization listed under VCF Instances and you will see a drop-down menu for ‘ADD A WORKLOAD DOMAIN’ select ‘Import a vCenter’

Input a unique name for the Workload Domain

Selecting ‘Specify an external vCenter‘ and un-check the vCenter connected to an NSX instance. Fill out authentication details of the vCenter

Confirm thumbprint and Acknowledge

Once you click Next, Prechecks will kick off

I did have some ‘Warnings’ relating to upgrade policy settings, it allows for me to resume. This might be something to revisit when SDDC Manager take on lifecycle.

Because a vCenter 8.x environment is being imported, NSX 4.x will require 3 managers.

For the Networking section, populate fields for an NSX Management Cluster. This will also use the same management network the vCenter is on.

I will keep the default NSX Overlay options and define my own passwords

At Validation I got hit with some additional errors. For the particular NSX version, binaries needed to be downloaded.

Just directed myself to Fleet Management and started the download **Notice you have to select VCF 5.2 from the version drop-down. Also had to look inside the Patch Binaries for the particular version.

Final Validation succeeded

Review

Once it kicked off, the rest can be monitored in Tasks under Fleet Management and when complete, you will have a Workload Domain added to your organization.

Home Lab, VCF

Creating an SDDC Cluster in vSphere 9.0: Step-by-Step Guide

sargonkhizeran

In my previous blog I commissioned 3 physical hosts into my Management Domain vCenter, the next step will be to create a SDDC Cluster.

To get started, from the Datacenter Object, go to create a new cluster and we have ‘Create Standard Cluster’ & ‘Create SDDC Cluster’

This will be a vSAN ESA cluster as these hosts were previously provisioned with that purpose.

Name the cluster

Selecting an Image in library, this happens to be the same version of ESXi 9.0 as the Management Hosts

Selecting vSAN HCI

When we get to the Host Selection, we have our 3 hosts we previously commissioned

I will go with the Default settings for the vDS, this will create a new one for the cluster.

The one yellow banner requires a VLAN for the NSX TEP address, click on the ‘Edit’

Populate the VLAN for the overlay and click ‘Save Changes’

Click ‘Acknowledge’ in order to proceed.

Review and click ‘Finish’

Once everything was completed, VCF Operations now recognizes the second cluster, in addition to the hosts being prepared for NSX in addition to be added to the NSX.

Home Lab, VCF

Commission & Add ESXi Hosts in VCF 9.0

sargonkhizeran

Previously I blogged about commissioning ESXi hosts in SDDC Manager on VCF 5.2. You can read about that here. Please review Broadcom TechDocs; Commission ESXI Hosts

With VCF 9.0 hosts are commissioned within their desired vCenter in vSphere under Global Inventory Lists & then click ‘Hosts’ under ‘Resources’

From here, let’s take a look at the different sections, for the first one you can see ‘Assigned’ hosts that are in use in the vCenter

Under ‘Unassigned’ it will show empty because there are no hosts in a commissioned and unassigned state.

Under Network Pools you will find the pool initially created during the VCF wizard, we have IPs available for vMotion & vSAN networks.

Going back to ‘Unassigned Hosts’, from here we can click ‘Commission Hosts’, review the host commission checklist, once completed, click ‘Proceed’

The Commission Host wizard appears and there are different ways of doing it, adding them manually or using the Bulk Import with a pre-populated JSON file. I already have my 3 physical SuperMicro E300 hosts, these are hosts I picked up about 5 years ago, you can read about my blog on those here. ESXi 9.0 has been installed and I’ve gone through the basic configurations pointed out in previous blogs and Broadcom TechDocs.

I will be importing these as vSAN ESA hosts, selecting Import, Browse to my JSON and click Upload.

Once the hosts appear, next step will be to ‘Confirm All Finger Prints‘ and click ‘Validate All‘

Alright, good start so far, everything verified, click ‘Next’ & ‘Commission’

Heading to VCF Operations for Tasks

While we can monitor the task in vSphere, we can also get more detailed task info from VCF Operations under Fleet Management >> Tasks >> you can see the task in progress and click on it to monitor steps and subtasks

Now that the commission has been completed, in vSphere we have some Unassigned Hosts

The next step would be to put those hosts to use.

Home Lab, VCF

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 – Step-by-Step Installer on Minisforum

sargonkhizeran

Recently Broadcom announced the release of VMware Cloud Foundation 9, this is not just vSphere alone, but your own modern private cloud giving you capabilities, to build, operate, consume & protect. To learn more about this news, please read about it on VMware’s blog here.

If you’ve followed any of my previous personal blog articles, it’s been using installing VCF 5.2 on my MINIS FORUM MS-01, today I will be deploying VCF 9 on those same systems using the VMware Cloud Foundation Installer.

I’ve already installed ESXi 9.0 on my 4 nodes, loaded William Lam’s vSAN ESA mock vib, (see William Lam’s Blog) and some prerequisite configurations on the hosts, which can be found here.

To start reading about the VCF Installer, check out the; What is the VMware Cloud Foundation Installer?

After the SDDC Manager Appliance is deployed, (I deployed mine on a VMFS datastore on ESX01 host and configured the ‘VM_Network’ portgroup with the vlan for the appliance.

The first thing I will do is plug in my token and

From the top-left corner, check out ‘Settings’, I will make some personal preferences here and ‘Save’

Configuring ‘Download Binaries’, click on ‘DEPOT SETTINGS AND BINARY MANAGEMENT’ and then to connect to an online depot, click ‘Configure’

Input your download token generated from the Broadcom Portal and click ‘Authenticate’.

Upon successful authentication, you will find Binary Management below it will load and you will have the options to begin downloading binaries.

You can see here binaries will change toggling between VMware Cloud Foundation or VMware vSphere Foundation, select the checkbox next to the product you plan on deploying and click the ‘Download’ button.

After some time, donwloads completed successfully and will move on to Deployment Wizard.

You can see we have binaries downloaded for either VCF or VVF. From here, I will select VCF deployment wizard

I will be deploying a new VCF Fleet (please read and familiarize yourself with this term as it will be used more often)

The next step (not shown here) is if you have an existing vCenter or VCF Operations environment that is being imported, this part I would love to test out later on.

For General Information, I will fill out required information, being I’m limited on resources in a lab, I will perform ‘Simple’ which deploys appliances in non-High Availability.

Filling out details and sizing for VCF Operations

For Step 4, I will elect to skip VCF Automation, this is due to resource constraints, also notice the graphic on the right, it’s changing as you go through the steps.

Fill out vCenter details

NSX appliance, because this is only a single node, I provided an FQDN for cluster VIP and for my first NSX node in the event I expand in the future.

For storage you can see you have several options as primary storage, I will be leveraging vSAN, and also vSAN Architecture ESA is default, however you can select OSA from the drop down menu.

Input your password for your ESXi hosts, add additional hosts if needed (by default 3 prompts appear), click ‘Add’ first and then click ‘CONFIRM ALL FINGERPRINTS’

This is what a successful confirmation should look like

The next configuration step defining Networks for ESXi Management, VM Management, vMotion & vSAN netwroks.

For Distributed Switch, I selected Default, initially I had 2 active NICs but that does generate some validation errors, so I was able to change it back to 1.

At the bottom of the switch configuration, this is where you define the NSX Transport Zone. To read more about Transport Zones, check Broadcom Docs ‘Create Transport Zones‘

The final step is confirming password for the SDDC Manager appliance

For the Review, you can check the settings inputted, review the configuration in JSON and download the JSON file as well.

For the final ‘Warning’ messages will allow you to Acknowledge but proceed. Not entirely sure why those messages are appearing, I’ve encountered success through those checks in the past. (I happen to switch the theme as part of a demo).

Click ‘Deploy’ and we’re off to the races.

Everything came back successfully deployed, we have options to review all passwords configured and links to launch VCF Operations.

A quick tour…VCF Operations

The Cluster object view of vSphere

Logging into NSX we can see the node and cluster VIP was configured

I hope the steps help you with your journey on deploying VCF, please continue reference Broadcom documentation, any professional services from a partner and Broadcom support.

Home Lab, VCF, Video

Changing the Datastore Type of a Commissioned ESXi host in VCF [Video]

sargonkhizeran

Did you select the incorrect Datastore type when commissioning an ESXi host? I was going through this as I was trying to deploy a second cluster in my Management Domain and thought “Oh No!” I previously imported hosts using JSON [Blog] and had selected ‘VSAN’ versus ‘VSAN_ESA’.

The following short video on my channel goes through the Decommission and Commission process of an Unassigned host.