Tag: sddc

Home Lab, VCF, Video

Deploying an additional vSAN cluster in a VCF Management Domain – Step-by-Step Walkthrough

sargonkhizeran

In a previous blog, I performed a Commission of 3 ESXi hosts, see Commission VCF ESXi hosts in SDDC Manager – Bulk Import w/ JSON – Sargon Khizeran and for the following steps, I will use those 3 hosts to deploy an additional vSAN cluster in my Management domain.

From SDDC Manager under Workload Domains, locate the Management Domain, click on the ellipses, and select ‘Add Cluster’

Because my hosts were configured and added for vSAN storage, selecting vSAN only.

Name the cluster and I will be using a pre-selected image to manage the cluster via vLCM.

Keeping this as a vSAN HCI cluster and the Failures to Tolerate is only 1, this is only 3 node cluster.

For Host Selection, I have only 3 in an Unassigned state so I will select all 3 and continue

For the Switch Configuration, there are several options depending on the physical network interface ports available on the host, features, redundancy, and how everything may be segmented on your network. You can configure some pre-defined switch configurations and there is a custom option as well.

For homelab and simplicity reasons, selecting ‘Default’ and have all traffic use 10GB links coming out of the host. There is also the yellow banner that requires vLANs to be entered, click ‘Edit’

The MTU for the majority of the traffic will be pre-determined and cannot be changed such as Management traffic being 1500 MTU and vSAN being at 9000, however, we do need to specify the VLAN for our NSX overlay for Host TEPs. Input it in the field, click ‘Save Changes’ and then Next.

Once you click ‘Save Changes’ it will prompt to ‘Acknowledge’ before clicking Next.

The next step to License can be Now or Later. I’m going with Later

At the final step for ‘Review’, check all the information and click ‘Finish’

Monitor the Tasks and respective Subtasks

When selecting ‘Task Info’ you will find the ‘CLUSTER_CREATION’

While monitoring the vSphere Client, the new cluster was configured and hosts started to get added

There is my newly created cluster in vSphere

We can log into our NSX Manager and monitor the NSX preparation of our hosts

Once everything is completed, if you jump back to the SDDC Manager >> Workload Domains >> select Management domain and locate the Clusters tab

It’s slightly different in the video, feel free to check out.

Home Lab, VCF

Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.1 on Minis Forum MS-01 Mini PC using Cloud Builder

sargonkhizeran

In my last blog, I talked about new hardware for my lab Unboxing the MINIS FORUM MS-01 Mini PC. Below is a Build of Materials I’m using for the deployment of VCF 5.2.1

  • 4 x MINIS FORUM MS-01 Mini PC
    • Intel Core i9 13900H
  • 8 x Crucial DDR5 5600 48GB SO-DIMM
    • 2 per workstation equaling 96GB in each host
    • Purchased these from Newegg
  • 4 x Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe M.2 2280
    • 1 NVMe dedicated for ESXI OS, while overkill on size, I had some extra laying around.
  • 8 x Samsung 990 EVO PLUS SSD, 2 in each MS-01
  • Networking – Ubiquiti USW Aggregate Pro with Ubiquiti SFP+ cables
    • 2 x10GB SFP+ cables plugged into each host

I’m not endorsed or paid by any of the companies mentioned in the BOM above. This is all experimental in my home lab please always refer to VMware by Broadcom best practices, validated designs, and check VMware Hardware Compatibility Guides.

Following the VCF 5.2.1 BOM (See Release Notes) I performed a clean ESXi install on each machine with ESXi 8.0 U3b-24280767. Minimal configurations, configure an NTP server and ensure service is started to Start/Stop with the host. I chose to not use SSH/SSL thumbprints however to overcome any SSL errors, it was helpful to regenerate certificates and restart services. Regenerate the Self-Signed Certificate on All Hosts.

Go through and fill out the vcf parameter workbook in detail and carefully, the specific version of the VCF Cloud Builder is 5.2.1-24307856. Ensure that your NTP server on the Cloud Builder appliance matches with what is in the workbook and is helpful on the hosts as it performs a check. Ensure you have all DNS entries for Forward & Reverse. I was running into some difficulties with deploying vSAN ESA, so this was an vSAN OSA deployment. I was striving for ESA but encountered several HCL check errors even though the parameter workbook specified a custom HCL. See William Lam’s blog here; Custom vSAN HCL JSON for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.1 and vSAN ESA using Nested ESXi

I was able to stand up vSAN ESA with a standalone

The Cloud Builder Validation was successful other than an NTP drift on one of the hosts, the Warning does allow us to ‘Acknowledge’ and proceed.

…and we’re off to the races, you can toggle the status to monitor

We made it to the vCenter, it deployed it one of the hosts and now the vCenter is available to log in and monitor and you can find the cluster has been created and hosts added.

During deployment, I encountered the following error with ‘ Failed to install VMCA Certificate on SDDC Manager ‘ ….and it seems the fix was rebooting the vCenter. Then attempt the ‘Retry’ within Cloud Builder

Once it continued, all other tasks completed successfully and SDDC is ready to be launched.

Here is the Management Domain

Here are the 4 hosts in the Management Domain.

Here is the view from the vSphere Client

Launched NSX and verified connectivity

If you made it this far, hope you found this to be helpful.

Cloud Management, Home Lab, LCM, Video

Applying Aria Suite 8.18 PSPack 3 [Video]

sargonkhizeran

VMware By Broadcom released Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.18 Product Support Pack 3 enabling upgrades to newer Aria products. You can review the Release Notes here.

Providing a quick video on how to obtain the download from The Broadcom Support Portal under VCF and applying it to the Aria Suite LCM appliance.

Home Lab, vSphere

Remediating VMTools using PowerCLI – Silent Install w/ No Reboot

sargonkhizeran

I’m a big fan of remediating VMTools using vLCM (vSphere Lifecycle Manager), but some customers want to have the capability to script the process, not want to reboot the VM right away.

In the upcoming instructions, these are performed in my personal HomeLab. I have a handful of VMs in a CSV file I will create a variable with, take a snapshot, install VMTools silently and not reboot the VM so that it can be rebooted at a later date such as a Guest OS patch window or planned maintenance window.

Please be sure to always follow VMware By Broadcom best practices and always test in a lab environment.

The following 6 VMs saved in a CSV file on my local drive.

The following script is straightforward, it will take the VMs and create a variable, then use that variable to create your snapshots and eventually perform the Tools Update silently with no reboot.

#Creating a variable containing VM Objects from a CSV file
$VMToolsPatching = Get-Content C:\scripts\VMToolsList.csv

#Take Pre-Upgrade Snapshots
Get-VM -Name $VMToolsPatching | New-Snapshot -Name "VmTools Lifecycle" -Description "Snapshot for VMTools lifecycle" -Memory:$false -Quiesce:$false -Confirm:$false

#Perform VMTools Updates
Get-VM -Name $VMToolsPatching | Update-Tools -NoReboot

Once the snapshot and patching complete, the VM should not reboot, however the VM’s Summary page will show the Tools version is Current

On a Windows machine, if you log onto the desktop, you will find the VMTools icon indicates a small reboot icon and inform it’s pending a reboot.

There are many options for rebooting the VM once you can determine a maintenance window.

Alternate Reboot Options

While these are not the only options, nothing beats good Ol ‘fashion ‘Restart Guest OS’ via Tools, but want to share a couple of options, ultimately the solution may depend on number of VMs or fits operational procedures.

One feature in vSphere 8.0 u3 is scheduling tasks on individual VMs such as the following

If you have VCF Operations (formerly Aria & vRealize) you can use Automation Central to schedule the reboot of one or many VMs. The following is just an example of a configured Action to Reboot VMs.