VCF deployment Design Guide

[VirtualTechnofille]

Hello,

I have a project where small remote virtualized environment needs to be deployed  with following requirements:

1) Environment need to be deployed with 3 Hypervisor hosts (ESXi).

2) Environment need to use All-Flash SAN (Netapp Ontap storage) . Using vSAN is not an option.

Currently there is an option to go with VCF licenses and deploy whole VMware stack vSphere/NSX/Aria Operations (without vSAN).

What is best design guide that could be used for deployment considering above requirements ?

[Marek Zdrojewski]

Hi,

So, basically VVF and not VCF deploy, right? If that's the case, just follow the general guidelines for vSphere 8, NSX, and Aria etc.

P.S. try posting in VMware vSphere community.

Hope this helps.

[VirtualTechnofille]

Hi Marek,

Thank you for reply. 

I was informed that NSX cannot be used with VVF because of licensing restrictions.

Hence VCF (Licenses) are the only way to go in case of NSX. That's why i was advised to post on VCF community.

I was hoping to follow design guide that is specifically give recommendation for deployment vSphere 8 + NSX + SAN, instead of picking pieces from general guidelines. 

As advised i will also post in vSphere community.

[pcgeek2009]

So, from my experience I am not sure 3 nodes will be enough. When we deployed VCF as the full stack, we could not create a cluster with less than 4 nodes. We were not using VSAN either. We were converting an existing 3-tier Cisco UCS to VCF. I had to free up 4 hosts in order to create a cluster for a workload domain. With that said, if the environment is not being controller by an SDDC manager and is just utilizing the licensing, then this may work with 3 host. This was also on version 4\4.5 so there could have been changes since the. 

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Rodney Barnhardt
vExpertPro
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[VirtualTechnofille]

Did you need 4 host without vSAN because of lack of CPU cores/ older generation hardware or because of software constrain ?

This are new hosts and whole cluster should be around 96 cores / 192 logical cores. As per current documentation seams environment cannot be deployed with SDDC (VCF Fleet Operation Manager) because of vSAN requirement. 

I heard rumor in VMware Explore 2024 Barselona that in future from vSphere 9/new VCF ver current SDDC limitations regarding vSAN-only support will be overcome. 

[pcgeek2009]

That was about 3 years ago, so I am not sure. I just remember there was an error that we had insufficient host. To get the minimum 4 host for one of our clusters, I had to borrow a blade from our DR site to have enough resources to create a workload domain. Once I had a few other host converted, I moved it back to our DR site. You can just use the licensing and not need all of the SDDC and management plane. I know this because we are currently pricing some VXRails from Dell and they require VCF licensing without off of the VCF management. I think because of VSAN. The only place VSAN is require right now is for a VCF SDDC management domain. We had 4 standalone host outside of the UCS cluster for the management domain. What I was referring to for needing the 4 host was to create a workload domain. 

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Rodney Barnhardt
vExpertPro
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[VirtualTechnofille]

Ah so it was software constrain. Basically you were able to overcome software constrain in order to create new workload domain, in existing VCF environment.

I agree there is always an option to do old school style of manual component installation without VCF management. 

Thank you for valuable experience share.