VMware Cloud Foundation with AVN and Static Routes but No BGP

In my previous post Home Lab Step-by-Step-vCF 4.2.1 install using VLC, we deployed the SDDC environment using VMware Lab Constructor with AVN and BGP, and with VLC you have an option to do it without AVN as well which would be a scenario where you wish to leverage VLAN backed networks only. Now, I am talking about the use case where you want to use AVN (Overlay segments), but do not want north-south routing to happen using dynamic routing protocol BGP. I didn't find any written or official document which explains the process it may be because whole idea of VCF is to bring more automation to the SDDC and using static routes every time we add a network adds more manual efforts.  

Having said that, though automation has its benefits, but when it comes to network you might have a constraint or may be a better design justification for using static routing over dynamic. For example, customer has limited routes which are less in number, along with customer only adds/deletes limited number of networks in a year, then they would want to go with static routing. Or may be just to keep the control in hand they would want to keep using static routing.

Now we know what are the requirements for setting up AVN's with BGP, now I am going to lay down the steps to deploy the environment with static routes.

Home LAB step by step Networking using VMware workstation

In my Home Lab series we covered everything from a physical ESXi Host perspective, however as highlighted by many readers most of us do not have server and wish to do the lab using VMware workstation, trickiest part is networking. How to achieve networking same as a DC and route multiple VLANs.

Thanks to my friend Mr Vaibhav Tiwari who helped me understand VMware workstation product as a whole, and it is really good for performing labs with limited resources, if not all but most of the labs can be covered with it.

How to resolve "VMware Hypervisor Recovery" ESXi 7 update 2 install or upgrade

If you are upgrading or installing your physical server which supports ESXi version 7 update 2 with a warning that it might not be supported with future releases, then you are very likely to face this screen "VMware Hypervisor Recovery, and the best part it doesn't move forward but gets stuck. It can become an issue if this happens with an ESXi host which runs production workloads, and you might not have time to rollback.

I faced same issue and thought of writing this post for you, to help with the steps required to work around the situation. VMware would surely fix it with future releases.  

Step-by-step VMware Cloud Foundation Repository update without Internet

In my previous post Step-by-step VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2.1 install using VLC we finished building our management domain successfully. Now in order to install vRealize suite we need to download the bundles from VMware, If you have direct internet connectivity (connection to depot.vmware.com) open for SDDC manager then you just need to authenticate with my.vmware.com account and it will start polling and downloading the packages.

If your SDDC manager do not have direct connectivity option, then there could be two scenarios.

1. Either a proxy server in place using which updates/bundles can be downloaded.
2. Environment is air gapped and only option is to offline bundle download and updating repository manually.

Access Denied SSH SSDC manager despite entering correct password

Most often we face an issue where we try to login any photon OS appliance using ssh but we get error access denied, now if the error is due to no access then solution is to provision access, however if the account has access and you are entering correct password still you are getting this error then you must consider that the account might have been locked due to failed login attempts.

Step-by-step VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2.1 install using VLC

In my previous post Step-by-step VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2.1 install I scrapped the lab we started for VCF 4.2.1 and now is the time we continue it with Lab constructor. It would be an injustice if I do not mention Tom Stephens(VMware)'s name who introduced VLC to me, and made my life easier.

In order to start with it we need to review the pre-requirements. You need a single physical host running ESXi 6.7+ with 12 cores, 128 GB RAM and 800 GB SSD.

Configure vSphere standard switch, create a trunk port group and set the switch MTU to 9000 , in our case we already have the Nested-SDDC switch and nested-Trunk port group configured. Our trunk port group is inheriting security settings from the switch, where its configured to accept forged transmits, promiscuous mode and mac address change. Disable these settings on the switch level and configure on the port group nested-trunk, we are doing this for only VCF lab, once we are done with this we will revert it. I am also powering off the CSR1000v virtual router, until this lab is complete.

Step-by-step VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2.1 install

In my previous post I was working with NSX-T, however due to some urgent requirement I started testing latest VCF suite. Hence this post is not about NSX-T, its about deploying VCF in home lab. Now as we all know that VCF is a pre-packaged bundle which comes with pre-validated versions of VMware portfolio products, and helps organizations adopt the private cloud with very little manual efforts. It uses automation to deploy the SDDC.

I am running VCF deployment on a single physical server, hence at some point in time I will run out of resources, at that point I will switch to deployment of VCF using VLC, VLC is the VMware Cloud Foundation Lab Constructor designed for professionals like us who wants to test product but can be limited due to physical resources. I am doing it old fashion way just to demonstrate how deployment would happen in real world, however VLC would actually be better to test the product. In case you do not have resources to test it at your ease no need to get disheartened, you can use simulation to learn.

What is vExpert?? Should I apply??

Well, I am not sure if you are aware of it or not but, applications are open for vExpert 2021. Now the big question what is vExpert and should I apply for it?

Let me answer the second question first, and answer is "YES, you should".

Home Lab Step-by-Step-NSX-T 3.1 design and Install-P1

 In my previous post Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-10-vSAN 7, we completed single site vSAN cluster setup. Now we will start deployment of NSX-T manager, after completing NSX-T manager installation we will talk about the different design scenarios, and we will discuss the deployment method for them as well.

If you are new to software defined networking space, then I would highly recommend reading Getting Started with NSX-T: Logical Routing and Switching: The Basic Principles of Building Software-Defined Network Architectures with VMware NSX-T by Iwan Hoogendoorn and If you at advanced level then would recommend reading Multi-Site Network and Security Services with NSX-T: Implement Network Security, Stateful Services, and Operations

Before we start deployment of our NSX-T manager, we need to make sure we are ready with pre-requisites. What are those pre-reqs? Well these are clear system requirements for NSX-T, hence kindly check them properly and make sure everything is in place.

Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-10-vSAN 7

In my previous post Home Lab Step-by-Step Part-9-HA-DRS, we completed the deployment of our virtual SDDC, and now we are ready to test different solutions.

Here, I would try to add some history, relevance and information about the solution we will be deploying in our lab environment. This should give you a fair understanding why we are doing something and what is the use case. Which becomes very helpful when we go out in real world for designing solutions for our customers.

So, let’s start with vSAN. First question which should be answered is “What is vSAN”?

Probably you already know the answer of this question, if not than let me help you with that.

Every datacenter (physical or virtual) comprises of five core elements, Compute, Storage, Network, Backup/Recovery and Security.