Leverage vSAN storage clusters across vCenter boundaries in VCF

Products

VMware SDDC Manager VMware Cloud Foundation VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Users cannot mount datastores present in one vCenter to a cluster present in another vCenter in SDDC-Manager, e.g. If a user needs to mount the datastore of a vSAN storage cluster present in one workload domain to vSphere clusters present in another workload domain then it cannot be achieved completely from SDDC-Manager workflows

Environment

VCF 9.0 and above

Cause

Cross vCenter mount is not available natively in SDDC manager workflows but is fully supported directly via vCenter.

Resolution

Perform cross-vc mount as an out of band operation (directly on vCenter) and then use import/convert workflows to ingest those configuration into VCF stack.

Some of the commonly used configurations are mentioned in this article.

Scenario 1 :

VCF environment with pre-configured management domain, storage domain and a vCenter deployed out of band of SDDC-Manager

Note: Storage domain can be thought of as a workload domain deployed and configured through SDDC-Manager which has primary cluster configured with vSAN storage type

Topology :
Management domain → Domain1/ vCenter01
Storage domain → Domain2/ vCenter02
Compute domain → Domain3/ vCenter03

Prerequisite :

Management domain deployed and configured through SDDC Manager.
Storage domain deployed and configured through SDDC Manager.
vCenter(vCenter03) deployed out of band of SDDC Manager.

Goal:

Mount storage cluster datastore present in domain2/vCenter02 to compute only clusters present in domain3/vCenter03

Steps:

Add remote datastore source in vCenter03 i.e details of vCenter02 in vCenter03. With this, storage cluster datastore present in vCenter02 will be shown as available datastore in vCenter03 while mounting
Create compute only clusters in vCenter03 through vCenter
Mount remote datastore on compute only clusters through vCenter
Import vCenter03 as domain3 in SDDC-Manager through VCF OPS/SDDC-Manager

Scenario 2 :

VCF customers with pre-configured management domain, storage domain and HCI domain

Note: HCI domain is a workload domain deployed and configured through SDDC-Manager which has primary cluster configured with vSAN ESA/OSA storage type

Topology :
Management domain → Domain1/ vCenter01
Storage domain → Domain2/ vCenter02
HCI domain → Domain3/ vCenter03

Prerequisite:

Management domain deployed and configured through SDDC-Manager
Storage domain deployed and configured through SDDC-Manager
HCI domain deployed and configured through SDDC-Manager

Goal:

Mount storage cluster datastore present in domain2/vCenter02 to compute only clusters present in domain3/vCenter03

Steps:

Add remote datastore source in vCenter03 i.e details of vCenter02 in vCenter03. With this, storage datastore present in vCenter02 will be shown as available datastore in vCenter03 while mounting
Create compute only clusters in vCenter03 through vCenter
Mount remote datastore on compute only clusters through vCenter
Sync vCenter03/domain3 into SDDC-Manager inventory

Scenario 3 :

Customers with individually configured vCenters.

Topology:
vCenter01 → vCenter which has vSAN ESA/OSA clusters
vCenter02 → vCenter which has storage clusters
vCenter03 → vCenter which has Compute only clusters

Prerequisite :

Properly configured vCenter with already created vSAN ESA/OSA clusters
Properly configured vCenter with already created storage clusters
Properly configured vCenter with already created compute only clusters such that compute only clusters mounts storage cluster's datastore/s

Goal:

Convert and import vCenters with cross-vc mount configuration into VCF stack.

Steps:

Perform convert operation on vCenter01 which will deploy a VCF instance and create a management domain
Import vCenter02 as domain2 in SDDC-Manager through VCF OPS/SDDC-Manager
Import vCenter03 as domain3 in SDDC-Manager through VCF OPS/SDDC-Manager

Note: Compute only cluster is a vSphere cluster prepped to mount remote datastore

Important:

All day-n operations like add host, remove host, stretch cluster etc can be performed directly from vCenter itself on imported clusters. After performing these operations, sync workflow should be triggered to reflect out-of-band changes in SDDC-Manager
All day-n operations like add host, remove host, stretch cluster etc can be performed directly from SDDC-Manager itself on natively created/greenfield clusters
Lifecycle management of all clusters(imported/natively created in SDDC-Manager) is supported by SDDC-Manager itself
If NSX cluster is not already configured, then NSX configuration will be taken care by SDDC-Manager during import operation
Password and certificate management of all clusters(imported/natively created in SDDC-Manager) is supported by SDDC-Manager itself

Additional Information

1.Follow https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsan/vsan/8-0/vsan-administration/expanding-and-managing-a-vsan-cluster/sharing-remote-vsan-datastores-with-hci-mesh/add-remote-vcenter-as-datastore-source.html to add remote datastore source
2.Follow https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-9-0-and-later/9-0/building-your-private-cloud-infrastructure/working-with-workload-domains/import-an-existing-vcenter-to-create-a-workload-domain.html to perform IMPORT operation
3.Follow https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-5-2-and-earlier/5-2/map-for-administering-vcf-5-2/importing-existing-vsphere-environments-admin/convert-or-import-a-vsphere-environment-into-vmware-cloud-foundation-admin.html to perform CONVERT operation
4.Follow https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-9-0-and-later/9-0/building-your-private-cloud-infrastructure/working-with-workload-domains/manage-workload-domain-configuration-drift-between-vcenter-server-and-sddc-manager.html to perform SYNC operation