VMware Cloud Foundation, Will it run on Oracle Ravello? Part 4: Deploying management cluster software

Before we begin

If you have not checked out what this series is about then please take a look at the previous parts below.

Part 1: Planning

Part 2: Ancillary Services

Part 3: Management Cluster “Hardware”

Management Cluster Software

Management cluster ESXi host install

If you made it this far, I am going to assume you have followed the steps in the previous 3 parts to this series. The first thing we need to do is power on the ESXi hosts and install ESXi.

I won’t run through the ESXi install, it is very straightforward. Just complete it and then eject the ISO from the host before rebooting.

Management cluster network assignment

Ensure that the A and reverse PTR records have been created in DNS on the ADDS server (VCFDC01)

In Part 3 of the blog series, I defined the VLAN ID’s that will be used with this lab, in the Ravello networking area. Each VLAN ID automatically created an associated gateway IP address.

We will use the gateway IP for VLAN ID 1611 when configuring the management network below.

Log into a host and select configure management network.

We will run through the options below in order.

2: Tag VLAN ID 1611 to the management network.

3: Set the network IP address settings as defined in part 1 of this blog series, planning.

4: I tend to disable IPv6, it is up to you if you do the same.

5: Define the DNS server as the ADDS server we created in part 2 of this blog series.

6: Set the domain suffix to your domain name.

Now, all being well, you should be able to ping the host by its name as defined in DNS, from the Windows jump server.

ESXi host patching

The release notes for VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5 call for ESXi 6.7 EP5 (build 10764712) version to be installed on the management hosts, which is a higher build than ESXi 6.7 U1 which has been installed previously.

To patch the hosts, download the update bundle from here. Search for the build number required.

Once you have downloaded the patch, upload it to the local datastore on the host

Log into the console on the host to enable SSH access.

SSH onto the host.

Run the following command

And this should update the host.

Reboot the host and the host should now be at the correct patch level.

 

Epilogue

We configured 4 ESXi hosts with a base install of ESXi and configured the management network. This will form the basis for the next part in this series, deploying and configuring SDDC manager.

Check out Part 5: Deploying and configuring SDDC manager to see how to deploy the SDDC manager virtual machine and run some configuration tasks.