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 Type | IP Address | VLAN ID | Subnet | Gateway | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Services | Ancillary Services | ||||
VCFDC01 | 10.0.0.3 | 1 | 255.255.0.0 | 10.0.0.2 | AD / DNS / NTP / DHCP / CA |
VCFJump01 | 10.0.0.4 | 1 | 255.255.0.0 | 10.0.0.2 | Jump Box |
VCFESXi01 | 10.0.0.5 | 1 | 255.255.0.0 | 10.0.0.2 | Deployment ESXi host |
Management Cluster | |||||
vcfmsddcmgr | 172.16.11.60 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | SDDC Manager |
vcfmpsc01 | 172.16.11.61 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | Platform Services Controller |
vcfmvcsa01 | 172.16.11.62 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | vCenter Server |
vcfmesxi01 | 172.16.11.101 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | ESXi Host01 |
vcfmesxi02 | 172.16.11.102 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | ESXi Host02 |
vcfmesxi03 | 172.16.11.103 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | ESXi Host03 |
vcfmesxi04 | 172.16.11.104 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | ESXi Host04 |
vcfmnsx01 | 172.16.11.63 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | NSX Manager |
vcfmnsxc01 | 172.16.11.64 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | NSX Controller 01 |
vcfmnsxc02 | 172.16.11.65 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | NSX Controller 02 |
vcfmnsxc03 | 172.16.11.66 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | NSX Controller 03 |
Workload Cluster | |||||
vcfwc01vcsa01 | 172.16.11.67 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | vCenter Server |
vcfwc01esxi01 | 172.17.11.101 | 1711 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.17.11.2 | ESXi Host01 |
vcfwc01esxi02 | 172.17.11.102 | 1711 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.17.11.2 | ESXi Host02 |
vcfwc01esxi03 | 172.17.11.103 | 1711 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.17.11.2 | ESXi Host03 |
vcfwc01esxi04 | 172.17.11.104 | 1711 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.17.11. | ESXi Host04 |
vcfwc01nsx01 | 172.16.11.68 | 1611 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.16.11.2 | NSX Manager |
vcfwc01nsxc01 | 172.17.11.121 | 1711 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.17.11.2 | NSX Controller 01 |
vcfwc01nsxc02 | 172.17.11.122 | 1711 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.17.11.2 | NSX Controller 02 |
vcfwc01nsxc03 | 172.17.11.123 | 1711 | 255.255.255.0 | 172.17.11.2 | NSX Controller 03 |
Network
Workload Domain | Cluster | VLAN Function | VLAN ID | Subnet | Gateway |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Services | Services Network | 1 | 10.0.0.0/16 | 10.0.0.2 | |
Management | Management Cluster | Management | 1611 | 172.16.11.0/24 | 172.16.11.2 |
vSphere vMotion | 1612 | 172.16.12.0/24 | 172.16.12.2 | ||
vSAN | 1613 | 172.16.13.0/24 | 172.16.13.2 | ||
VXLAN (NSX VTEP) | 1614 | 172.16.14.0/24 | 172.16.14.2 | ||
vRealize | 1616 | 172.16.16.0/24 | 172.16.16.2 | ||
Workload | Workload Cluster | Management | 1711 | 172.17.11.0/24 | 172.17.11.2 |
vSphere vMotion | 1712 | 172.17.12.0/24 | 172.17.12.2 | ||
vSAN | 1713 | 172.17.13.0/24 | 172.17.13.2 | ||
VXLAN (NSX VTEP) | 1714 | 172.17.14.0/24 | 172.17.14.2 | ||
vRealize | 1716 | 172.17.16.0/24 | 172.17.16.2 |
Check out the next installment below:
Part 2 – Deploying ancillary services
4 Responses
[…] Part 1: Planning […]
[…] Part 1: Planning […]
[…] Part 1: Planning […]
[…] READ MORE […]