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Monday 23 August 2021

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.

Saturday 14 August 2021

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.

Sunday 8 August 2021

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.  

Sunday 25 July 2021

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.

Friday 16 July 2021

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.

Sunday 4 July 2021

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.

Friday 25 June 2021

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.

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