VCloud foundation fully automated deployment with bringup using vlc

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vCloud foundation fully automated deployment with bringup using vlc

vlc ( http://tiny.cc/getVLC ) is powerCLI (VMWare powershell module for managing ESXi hosts / vCenter etc.) script for configuring nested setup for vCloud Foundation. Since vCloud Foundation is not setup step by step manually (Install ESXi, Install vCenter, etc.) but is instead built automatically using cloud builder and an input parameters file, it is not easy to get this setup in lab or nested lab, unless you have validated hardware nodes available as spare. With help of vlc we can setup nested (ESXi installed in a VM on top of existing ESXi host) vCF for experiments.

The below document is based on VLC 4.2

For this following pre-requisites are required:

1. An ESXi host with ESXi 6.7+ with 12 cores, 128 GB RAM and 800 GB disk space. It would be best if the disk is SSD
2. A Windows 10 VM or use enterprise evaluation license if required
3. VMWare Licenses for

   ESXi

   4 socket license

   vSAN

   4 socket license

   vCenter

   1 standard license

   NSX

   4 socket license

If the above mentioend pre-requisites are available then to get fully automated vCF including build-up using VLC use below steps:

1. Configure ESXi host switch with MTU 9000
2. Create at least one trunked port-group with all VLANs trunked Create standard port-group for trunking all VLANs to VM
3. On the above all-vlan-trunk port-group make sure all the three security settings are set to accept:
   • Promiscuous Mode = Accept
   • Allow Forged Transmits = Accept
   • Allow MAC Address Changes = Accept

   This is required even if the settings are set to accept at switch level. Override them at port-group level and set them to accept again.

4. Disable HA, DRS at cluster level. Optionally also disable vMotion service on vmkernel port
5. Build a Windows 10 VMs with one NIC connected to current LAN.
   1. Install VMWare tools on Windows VM and reboot.
   2. Add second NIC of type "vmxnet3" connected to ALL-VLAN-TRUNK port-group
   3. Install following software on Windows host
      1. Dotnet framework offline installer 4.8 for Windows
      2. VMWare ovf tool 4.4.1
      3. Download offline bundle of VMWare powerCLI 12.1 and install it using:
         1. Open powershell with administrator privileges (Right click on powershell launch icon and choose "Run as administrator")
         2. Execute command

            $env:PSModulePath

         3. Based on the output of above command go to one of the modules directory (Create it if required) and extract offline downloaded powerCLI 12.1 zip file contents in this location. After extracting you should have 10+ subfolders named VMWare.* inside the Modules folder.
         4. In the administrator powershell cd to the modules folder where you have extracted the offline bundle.
         5. Execute following to unblock extracted modules

            Get-ChildItem * -Recurse | Unblock-File

         6. Check the version of powerCLI that got installed using:

            Get-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -ListAvailable

         Refer https://developer.vmware.com/powercli/installation-guide

   4. On the second NIC of Windows host (Connected to all VLAN trunk port) set IP 10.0.0.220/24 with DNS as 10.0.0.221 without any gateway
   5. On second NIC of Windows host configure VLAN as 10. Right click on adapter go to properties -> Click on configure -> Go to Advanced tab -> Go to VLAN ID property and set its value to 10
   6. Download VLC by filling google form ( https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/e/1FAIpQLScU_X8LpdC6FHpANGBkdY87GoBkuuWcIiVh7dalFqJQJAOLpw/formResponse ) or using direct download link https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsvsgf37wb65448/VLC_4.2_021021.zip?dl=0
   7. Extract the Zip file at C:\VLC
   8. Download latest cloud builder appliance (VMWare Cloud Builder 4.2.0 at time of this writing) and cop the OVA to C:\VLC folder
   9. Edit AUTOMATED_AVN_VCF_VLAN_10-13_NOLIC_v42 file and set the four licenses (ESXi, vSAN, vCenter and NSX) at appropriate places in the document. Do not modify anything else.
   10. Run "VLCGUi.ps1" in powershell.
   11. Choose automated option for the deployment.
   12. Give vCenter of ESXi host details for connection in the right side fields and try connect
   13. Based on connection choose cluster, network (ALL-VLAN-Trunk-port-group created earlier) and datastore for vCF node deployment
   14. Select the cloud builder ova
   15. Click Validate
   16. Once validation is successful click Construct to build the nested vCF setup.

       On 6 2xTB magnetic disks based datastore in RAID 5 (10TB usable) with 256 GB RAM server with 32 cores, it took about 4 hours for deployment to complete.

Refer:

Blog on VLC part 1

https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2020/01/31/deep-dive-into-vmware-cloud-foundation-part-1-building-a-nested-lab/

Blog on VLC part 2

https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2020/02/06/deep-dive-into-vmware-cloud-foundation-part-2-nested-lab-deployment/

Google form to get link for downloading VLC

https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/e/1FAIpQLScU_X8LpdC6FHpANGBkdY87GoBkuuWcIiVh7dalFqJQJAOLpw/formResponse

Direct VLC 4.2 download link

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsvsgf37wb65448/VLC_4.2_021021.zip?dl=0

VLC slack community

https://vlc-support.slack.com

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