Very rarely do I actually post a Blog, but I actually got something working and felt documenting this for the greater vCommunity would be a good thing to do. I’ve been after trying to get a workable Demo Lab built for some time. I wanted all the SDDC Components, vSphere, NSX, SDDC Manager, vRNI, vSAN, NSX Intelligence, vROPS. I want it ALL! 

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

So I started down the path of the VLC Cloud Foundation Lab Constructor. I don’t have the required Hardware on hand to make this work, so I thought I’d try building this on an OVH US based Host. Here’s the Step by Step Process to getting everything up and running. I’ll point out important things in between screen shots, so be sure to read between the lines, literally.

Step 1: Order up a OVH Dedicated Host. I’m using the Best Value series with some larger storage to meet the VLC minimum requirements.

Step 2: Once your server is in your account, Install ESXi from an OVH Template. You also get IPMI Console access and if you want to mount an ISO image and manually install, you can do that too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Software RAID isn’t recognized by ESXi, so you’ll end up with a bunch of individual Datastores to use.

 

Step 3: While your server is building, if you want to enable External Internet connectivity to the LAB VMs order up an OVH Failover IP. 

 

 

Step 4: Once you have the Failover IP, you can then add a Virutal MAC address to it. The Virtual MAC is assigned to the VNIC of the Guest VM you will install on the host. This VNIC must use a Port Group that is mapped to the Physical NIC on vSwitch0. You get TWO physical NICs on an OVH host. NIC 0 connects to the Internet if you map the MAC correctly. NIC 1 maps to the Internal OVH vRACK network for connecting multiple Physical Hosts together across OVH Network. You essentially create your own VLAN with their vRACK service.

Step 5: Add the Virtual MAC as a VMware MAC, and Label it. I’ll be mapping mine to a VeloCloud Virtual Edge, but you can also use your Virtual Firewall Edge Appliance of choice. pFsense works well too. 

 

Step 6: Login to the Host using the Public interface info OVH gives you. Start setting up your datastores. You’ll also want to configure the vSwitch Networks per the VLC Guide. You’ll also need to add another MGMT vmknic that has an IP that will be reachable from the VLC Jump host we will create later.

 

Step 7: Upload some ISO images to the host to build yourself a Jump Box from which you will install everything. I’m using Server 2019. Eventually I’ll migrate the DNS and other services the Cloud Builder appliance provides onto a proper Domain Controller. 

Step 8: Install Windows Guest, be sure to follow the VLC Guide for requirements, and add additional VMXnet3 Network Interfaces.

Step 9: Download the VLC Script package http://tiny.cc/getVLC 

Step 10: Download the CloudBuilder OVA of your choice from the VMware Portal, or vExpert Portal or wherever you have access. Here I’m using the OVA for VCF 4.0.

Step 11: I had to modify the default host json. The settings it had were too restricted to reliably get all the services running on this low budget OVH host. So I cranked up each host as follows for best results. Yes I’m oversubscribing the 256GB of Memory on the physical host, but it’ll be OK I promise.

Step 12: Once you have everything ready per the VLC Guide, right click the VLCGui Script and RUN WITH POWERSHELL!

 

Step 13: Select AUTOMATED then, Connect the VLC GUI to your host Internal MGMT IP you created in step 6. Select the VLC-Trunk you created and the Datastore. Uncheck the “Do Bringup?” check box. I could not reliably get this part to work. So doing a hybrid of Automated and Manual bring up worked multiple times for me on this Hardware. 

Step 14: Point the VLC to the location of the CloudBuilder OVA.

Step 15: Hit CONSTRUCT and go get some Coffee. Takes about 35 mins to spin up the Virtual Nested infrastructure in this step.

 

Step 16: If you skipped the Fully Automated Bring up, here’s the steps to complete the rest of the VLC build. Login to the Cloud Builder VM. 

Step 17: Agree to the EULA

Step 18: Select VMware Cloud Foundation

Step 19: Check the box, click Next

Step 20: Skip the download since we already have this with the JSON included with the VLC, NEXT

Step 21: Select the JSON

Step 22: Point it to the AUTOMATED NO AVN JSON file

Step 23: Validate the JSON

Step 24: It may find some Warnings due to the CloudBuilder running DNS, but there should be no show stoppers here. Acknowledge the warnings to proceed.

Step 25: DEPLOY SDDC!

 

Step 26: Wait, this one takes awhile, somewhere between 3 and 4 hours for me.

Step 27: SUCCESS!

Step 28: LAUNCH SDDC Manager!

Step 29: If the UI for SDDC Manager doesn’t load, you may need to Migrate it to another host, I moved mine to host 4 and it was working better. You may need to reboot SDDC Manager and NSX Manager to get their UI’s to load up after they’ve been deployed.

 

Step 30: If all went well, you should now have a fully operational VCF deployment, with SDDC Manager and NSX-T 3.0!

 

I hope you find this helpful. More to come as I attempt to add in vRNI and NSX Intelligence.

Britton Johnson

@VCIXNV

If someone asked you to define Bravery what would you answer? Probably something like “Being brave means you take risks without being afraid.” Which might be a fine definition, but I think its missing something.

When I left a Full Time job with benefits, to start my own company lots of people thought I was being brave. I didn’t really see it that way, and still don’t. For me it was the next logical step in a career where I was constantly working for companies that had shrinking IT needs. Or they were showing signs of instability. I’ve been laid off once before, and I’m not willing to put my livelihood into the hands of someone else.

In the last few years as my kids discovered a love for Thomas and Friends. My daughter Molly’s favorite Engine on the Island of Sodor is a funny looking one called Gerald but he goes by the nickname “Gator”.

You need to know a few things about Gator.

• He’s designed with the special slanted water tank so he can carry loads uphill high in the mountains
• He enjoys his work and being helpful and useful
• He’s afraid of heights

That’s right, the creators of this series designed and built this character with a flaw that directly opposes what he is supposed to be used for. Sound familiar to anyone? I meet IT admins all the time, who are good at what they do, they love it and would say it’s what they’re supposed to be doing. Yet they are often crippled with fear of the “what if”. What if even though I tested something, I deploy it in production and it takes down the whole company? What if my company gets hit with Ransomware and we can’t get important data back? What if we have a disaster and over recovery plan has a flaw because we didn’t test it properly? What if I’m not as smart as every one in the room thinks I am, and they figure me out? This last one known in IT circles as “Imposter Syndrome” is becoming a large issue for IT people. See my friend Cody De Arklands great blog post for more on this.

Here’s what happened to Gator. He was carrying a load up a mountain side for the first time. He got to a bridge high in the air and suddenly was terrified that he had to cross it. He then gives us the best description I’ve ever heard for what Bravery really is. I have to quote him directly. “One day I was faced with having to cross a high bridge, higher than any bridge I’d ever seen before. But I was pulling trucks loaded with important supplies, the villagers needed my help! I decided I must be Brave! It took everything in me to cross that bridge, but I did it even though I was scared. So you see being brave isn’t the same thing as not feeling scared, being brave is about what you do even when you do feel scared.”

Being brave is about what you do even when you do feel scared.

Maybe I’m just a simple thinker, but this definition of Bravery carries so much weight and truth. I hope it helps you the next time you find yourself about to cross that high bridge of whatever you’re afraid of. Remember Gators method of Bravery.

• Face your fear
• Decide to be Brave
• Push through the fear using Bravery as your engine

Make the decision to be brave, it’s not something that happens by accident. I promise if you do, you’ll come out the other side, and everyone will notice you’re different and better for overcoming it.

 

Britton Johnson

Gigabrit , LLC

@vcixnv

 

https://youtu.be/hCmxDNSWVqs?t=1631

Step one , set up your OVH.com account. Login to the Web Control Panel and Order a Server.

Once your server is provisioned and setup (times vary based on type and location) you can go into the Web Control Panel and install your ESXi image. Below are the screen shots for installing an ESXi image. After it is loaded you will receive an email with login information.

-Britton Johnson

@vcixnv

vExpert 2017, VCIX-NV, VCP6-DCV, VCP6-NV, MCSA, MCTS