DavidRing.ie

Note: this is an example for reference only please use the VxRail installation procedures & services provided by Dell.

This is the first in a series of posts covering VCF 5.1 On VxRail 8.0.200. The following post provides an example walkthrough covering the process of:

• Deploying a VxRail Management Workload Domain cluster
• Enabling vLCM via API on VxRail
• Deploying VMware CloudBuilder for VxRail
• Bring-Up of VCF 5.1 using multi vDS design

Versions used in this example are VCF 5.1 On VxRail 8.0.200. Release Information:

The end result of this example build is that of a single site VCF on VxRail solution including a single NSX VI Workload Domain:

Management Workload Domain Creation

The VxRail bring-up of the Management Cluster is similar to a standard VxRail bring-up with embedded vCenter being deployed. Previously there was a requirement to externalize the vCenter using VxRail Manager plugin from the vCenter HTML client but this is now fully automated as part of the Cloud Builder Bring-Up process. Also changing the Management port group to Ephemeral port type post VxRail bring-up is also not required as it is now an option during the VxRail deployment as can be seen in the following walkthrough. SSH service on each ESXi host is disabled by default as part of the bring-up. Tasks include:

• VxRail Mgmt WLD cluster bring-up
• Rename DC, Cluster, VDS, vSAN
• Confirm health status in the vCenter Server vSphere Web Client, check vSAN health and verify no vSAN components are resyncing
• vSAN HCL DB up-to-date (VMware KB)

In this example I have chosen to enable vLCM in the Mgmt WLD. vLCM can be enabled on both OSA & ESA clusters but it is important to note if the management cluster is an ESA cluster then you must enable vLCM. Enabling vLCM in the Mgmt WLD must be done in advance of cloudbuilder. There are multiple ways of enabling vLCM on a VxRail cluster such as using the vCenter UI which is detailed here or directly at the VxRail API layer (a feature introduced with VxRail 8.0.200) which is the method used in this example and detailed here. In this example we enable vLCM directly from VxRail Manager’s built in API browser. Begin by navigating to https://VxRail-Manager-IP/rest/vxm/api-doc.html#/, administrator@vsphere.local are the authentication details used in the Auth section of the API:

Deploy CloudBuilder

VCF On VxRail is deployed leveraging VMware Cloud Builder for which the OVA can be downloaded from VMware.com and deployed as follows: 

VCF Bring-Up

The following section details the VCF on VxRail Bring-Up. At this stage the Cloud Builder VM has been deployed, powered on and user logged into the Cloud Builder UI, from here you proceed as follow:

• Download the parameter Sheet from Cloud Builder (/opt/vmware/sddc-support/cloud_admin_tools/JsonGenerator/sample/)
• Populate the Parameter sheet based on network and environment specifics
• Validate the Parameter sheet values

Below are some example screen captures of the parameter sheet (Note: it is no longer required to provide Edge/AVN entries and BGP Peering details at this point as this task is now a Day-N option which I will cover later in this series.). You will note that I have availed of the new VCF 5.1 feature to selected a 2x vDS design while enabling NSX VLAN on the VxRail System managed vDS and then creating a second vDS specifically for the NSX Overlay traffic (Note: Only one vDS can be used for Overlay Traffic):

Before proceeding with the VCF bring-up it is good practice to create snapshots of the following virtual machines in the result that a rollback is required:

1. VMware vCenter Server Appliance
2. VMware Cloud Builder
3. VxRail Manager

During bring-up the following components are automatically deployed and configured:

• SDDC Manager
• NSX Managers

On completion of VCF Bring-up we review the Management Domain VMs created in vCenter by the VCF Bring-Up process and confirm automatic IP assignment from the DHCP IP pool for the NSX-T Virtual Tunnel Endpoints (VTEPs).

Note: Cloud Builder in previous releases generated a JSON file for the management cluster from the uploaded config file, this vcf-public-vxrail.json file is now automatically deleted upon successful bring-up to address security concerns.

In Part 2 I will walkthrough the deployment of Application Virtual Networks (AVN)s including the NSX Edge Cluster and NSX network segments via SDDC Manager UI.

Note: this is an example for reference only please use the VxRail installation procedures provided by Dell.

Thanks for reading!