Supporting all Principal Storage Options in VMware Cloud Foundation 9

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 supports a variety of storage types as principal storage (see Storage Models in the product documentation for more details). Typically, principal storage is configured during creation of the management or workload domains or when adding new clusters to an existing workload domain. These scenarios are referred to as greenfield deployments.

However, additional principal storage types such as iSCSI, NFS v4.1, and NVMe over Fabrics (FC or TCP) which are not currently available in greenfield VCF workflows can be configured as principal storage for VCF 9 using the following methods.

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x

Resolution

Management Domain Deployment:

1. Download and deploy ESXi 9 on the selected hosts
2. Configure iSCSI, NFS v4.1, or NVMe over Fabrics (FC or TCP) datastore storage on one of the hosts
3. Download and deploy the vCenter 9 appliance on the host with the pre-configured datastore
4. Within the newly deployed vCenter, configure a vSphere cluster with all of the selected hosts using the pre-configured datastore
5. Download and deploy the VCF Installer then use the Converge workflow to convert the vSphere 9 environment into a VCF 9 instance
1. This operation will utilize the pre-configured datastore as principal storage for the VCF management domain
2. See Converging Existing Virtual Infrastructure to a VCF or a vSphere Foundation Platform in the documentation for more details

Workload Domain Deployment:

1. To deploy workload domains with iSCSI, NFS v4.1 or NVMe of Fabrics (FC or TCP) as principal storage, repeat steps 1-4 above
2. In VCF Operations from the newly deployed VCF 9 instance, select Add Workload Domain -> Import a vCenter, and select the newly created vCenter in step 1
1. This operation will create a new workload domain utilizing the pre-configured datastore as principal storage
2. See Import an Existing vCenter to Create a Workload Domain in the product documentation for more details
3. Repeat these steps as necessary to provision new workload domains

 

LCM and Day 2 Operations:

• Hosts and clusters that were provisioned using the above method can be fully lifecycle managed by VCF Operations
• However, for day 2 operations other than LCM such as host commissioning, adding hosts or clusters, removing hosts or clusters, first perform these operations in the respective vCenter and then run the “Sync Inventory” operation from the VCF Operations console
• Important note: If this step is not performed then lifecycle management in VCF Operations will be blocked for these hosts and clusters
• See Managing Configuration Drift in the documentation for more details