Step-by-step VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3 design and install MGMT domain

As VMware cloud foundation 4.3 is around for a while and 4.3.1 is already available, I thought I should write this piece on how to design and deploy step by step. So with out wasting any time lets directly jump on to the product. VMware cloud foundation is available for some time now and many enterprises are adopting it because of ease of management it provides, in terms of a complete suite which includes all required/necessary products for a true software defined datacenter. But if you are new to VMware Cloud Foundation then be aware VMware cloud foundation is a VMware validated suite of products such as vSphere for compute virtualization, vSAN for storage virtualization and NSX for network virtualization along with other products to ease day 2 operations. Interoperability of these products is extensively tested by VMware and finally made available for general use. It is based on VMware validated designs so all solution designing principle are accounted for.

If you are installing it fresh or you need to upgrade from a previous version of VCF I would recommend reading the release notes. Below are few sections I focus.

Step-by-Step-NSX-T 3.1 design and Install-P2

In my previous post Home Lab Step-by-Step-NSX-T 3.1 design and Install-P1, we completed the installation of NSX-T managers and added compute manager. In this post we will start discussing the different deployment options and how to ascertain which deployment model is best suited for our customers.

But, before jumping on to deployment options, I would like to talk about architecting/designing a solution. This is for the folks who are new to solution architecture field. To summarize, a solution is build up of  5 components. Requirements, Risks, Constraints, Assumptions and based on these, design decisions.

Step-by-Step server 2022 installation on VMware platform

Here I came again with a new post, this time its not a VMware product but recently announced Microsoft Windows server 2022, on 1st June 2021 it was announced that it is available in evaluation center. It was in preview since march 2021, in addition to multi-layer security and hybrid capabilities with azure, it features flexible platform to modernize applications with containers.

We are going to install Server 2022, On VMware platform with ESXi Version 7.

Are you testing NSX-T ECMP link failover or network convergence correctly?

 Hello friends!! In this post I am going to talk about NSX-T link failover testing, which we all do at the end of deployment. 

I recently got to know I was doing it all wrong. Though it was always giving correct results still that's not the recommended way of checking link failover or testing convergence NSX-T deployment.

Well you must be wondering what was I doing and what you should be avoiding. 

So let me spill the beans, I was testing convergence by disconnecting Edge node virtual NIC one by one, which makes that path down and traffic use to converge to other available path. However it is not the correct way of doing it. 

So if you are also using same test for making a path down, would suggest not to use it, instead bring down physical NIC card of the host and for complete edge node failure, put edge node in maintenance mode.  

URPF mode NSX-T with VMware Cloud Foundation Not configured automatically

I am writing this post for everyone who is planning to use VMware cloud foundation with NSX-T Tier-0 Active-Active configuration.

Well its a short post and will not take long.

In my recent engagement, we completed the VMware cloud foundation management domain bring-up with AVN but without BGP.

I have posted about bring-up without BGP topic in a separate post.

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.