VMware Cloud Foundation, Will it run on Oracle Ravello? Part 1: Planning

Background

If you have read any of my previous blog posts, you may have seen I have run a few different workload types on top of Oracle Ravellos public cloud infrastructure. As a vExpert, a nice little perk available from Ravello is 1000 CPU hours per month, for free, to use their service. What is great about this is that you can run native VMware virtual machines, but also run ESXi instances on top of bare metal Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

So, why do I want to run VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)? I think it looks like a great basis for getting to grips quickly with most of the major products in the VMware Software Defined Datacentre. vSphere, vSAN, NSX, vROPS, vRO and vRA to name a few (Acronym overload!). Also, I can’t find a great deal out there in terms of personal blog posts on running VCF. I don’t know if that’s because its just not possible, or people don’t have the resources to run this as a home lab type project. This blog series is going to find out :).

Planning

There are a lot of moving parts to build a VCF stack, I mentioned a few of them in the background above. It is definitely best to plan out what the environment should look like before embarking on building it. There is a great blog post here detailing what’s new in VCF 3.0 by Giuliano Bertello which I have used this as the basis of my planning research.

I think it would be silly to approach a project like this without any upfront planning. A great place to get started is here with the VCF Planning and Preparation guide. It outlines the minimum requirements for each workload domain and any ancillary services that are required to make the SDDC a reality.

To get started, my environment will consist of Active Directory server which will also act as DNS etc, standalone ESXi host used to provision SDDC manager, 1 management cluster and 1 workload cluster.

What does that look like then?

To keep things simple, I have adopted the naming convention and VLAN ID from the samples in the VCF Planning and Preparation guide. Below are the minimum requirements, in my mind, to get this thing up and running.

Infrastructure

Workload TypeIP AddressVLAN IDSubnetGatewayDescription
ServicesAncillary Services
VCFDC0110.0.0.31255.255.0.010.0.0.2AD / DNS / NTP / DHCP / CA
VCFJump0110.0.0.41255.255.0.010.0.0.2Jump Box
VCFESXi0110.0.0.51255.255.0.010.0.0.2Deployment ESXi host
Management Cluster
vcfmsddcmgr172.16.11.601611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2SDDC Manager
vcfmpsc01172.16.11.611611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2Platform Services Controller
vcfmvcsa01172.16.11.621611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2vCenter Server
vcfmesxi01172.16.11.1011611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2ESXi Host01
vcfmesxi02172.16.11.1021611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2ESXi Host02
vcfmesxi03172.16.11.1031611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2ESXi Host03
vcfmesxi04172.16.11.1041611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2ESXi Host04
vcfmnsx01172.16.11.631611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2NSX Manager
vcfmnsxc01172.16.11.641611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2NSX Controller 01
vcfmnsxc02172.16.11.651611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2NSX Controller 02
vcfmnsxc03172.16.11.661611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2NSX Controller 03
Workload Cluster
vcfwc01vcsa01172.16.11.671611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2vCenter Server
vcfwc01esxi01172.17.11.1011711255.255.255.0172.17.11.2ESXi Host01
vcfwc01esxi02172.17.11.1021711255.255.255.0172.17.11.2ESXi Host02
vcfwc01esxi03172.17.11.1031711255.255.255.0172.17.11.2ESXi Host03
vcfwc01esxi04172.17.11.1041711255.255.255.0172.17.11.ESXi Host04
vcfwc01nsx01172.16.11.681611255.255.255.0172.16.11.2NSX Manager
vcfwc01nsxc01172.17.11.1211711255.255.255.0172.17.11.2NSX Controller 01
vcfwc01nsxc02172.17.11.1221711255.255.255.0172.17.11.2NSX Controller 02
vcfwc01nsxc03172.17.11.1231711255.255.255.0172.17.11.2NSX Controller 03

Network

Workload DomainClusterVLAN FunctionVLAN IDSubnetGateway
ServicesServices Network110.0.0.0/1610.0.0.2
ManagementManagement ClusterManagement1611172.16.11.0/24172.16.11.2
vSphere vMotion1612172.16.12.0/24172.16.12.2
vSAN1613172.16.13.0/24172.16.13.2
VXLAN (NSX VTEP)1614172.16.14.0/24172.16.14.2
vRealize1616172.16.16.0/24172.16.16.2
WorkloadWorkload ClusterManagement1711172.17.11.0/24172.17.11.2
vSphere vMotion1712172.17.12.0/24172.17.12.2
vSAN1713172.17.13.0/24172.17.13.2
VXLAN (NSX VTEP)1714172.17.14.0/24172.17.14.2
vRealize1716172.17.16.0/24172.17.16.2

 

Check out the next installment below:

Part 2 – Deploying ancillary services

 

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