DefinIT

vRealize Lifecycle Manager 1.2 VC data collection fails when NSX-T hostswitches are in use

by Leave a Comment

vRLCM LogoWhen vRealize Lifecycle Manager 1.2 was released recently, I was keen to get it installed in my lab, since I maintain several vRealize Automation deployments for development and testing, as well as performing upgrades. With vRLCM I can reduce the administrative overhead of managing the environments, as well as easily migrate content between environments (I’ll be blogging on some of these cool new features soon).

However, I hit a snag when I began to import my existing environment – I couldn’t get the vCenter data collection to run.

Data Collection Failed [Read more…]

NST-T 2.0 Lab Build: Logical Router Configuration

by Leave a Comment

Posts in this series
  1. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying NSX Manager
  2. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster
  3. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: ESXi Host Preparation
  4. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Adding a vCenter Compute Manager and Preparing Hosts
  5. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Edge Installation
  6. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Transport Zones and Transport Nodes
  7. NST-T 2.0 Lab Build: Logical Router Configuration
  8. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Upgrading to NSX-T 2.1

Disclaimer! I am learning NSX-T, part of my learning is to deploy in my lab – if I contradict the official docs then go with the docs!

Lab Environment

This NSX-T lab environment is built as a nested lab on my physical hosts. There are four physical ESXi hosts, onto which I will deploy three ESXi VMs, a vCenter Server Appliance, NSX Manager, an NSX Controller cluster, and two NSX Edge Nodes.

Physical, virtual and nested components of the NSX-T lab

Deployment Plan

I will follow the deployment plan from the NSX-T 2.0 documentation:

  • Install NSX Manager.
  • Install NSX Controllers.
    • Join NSX Controllers with the management plane.
    • Initialize the control cluster to create a master controller.
    • Join NSX Controllers into a control cluster.
  • Join hypervisor hosts with the management plane.
  • Install NSX Edges.
    • Join NSX Edges with the management plane.
  • Create transport zones and transport nodes.
  • Configure Logical Routing and BGP

When this post series is complete, the network topology should be something like this, with two hostswitches configured. The ESXi Hosts will have a Tunnel Endpoint IP address, as will the Edge. The Edge will also have an interface configured for a VLAN uplink.

The NSX-T Transport Node network configuration

In this post I will walk through configuring VLAN Logical Switch, Tier-0 Router, Tier-1 Router, Uplink Profiles and BGP dynamic routing to the physical router.
[Read more…]

NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Transport Zones and Transport Nodes

by 4 Comments

Posts in this series
  1. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying NSX Manager
  2. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster
  3. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: ESXi Host Preparation
  4. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Adding a vCenter Compute Manager and Preparing Hosts
  5. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Edge Installation
  6. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Transport Zones and Transport Nodes
  7. NST-T 2.0 Lab Build: Logical Router Configuration
  8. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Upgrading to NSX-T 2.1

Disclaimer! I am learning NSX-T, part of my learning is to deploy in my lab – if I contradict the official docs then go with the docs!

Lab Environment

This NSX-T lab environment is built as a nested lab on my physical hosts. There are four physical ESXi hosts, onto which I will deploy three ESXi VMs, a vCenter Server Appliance, NSX Manager, an NSX Controller cluster, and two NSX Edge Nodes.

Physical, virtual and nested components of the NSX-T lab

Deployment Plan

I will follow the deployment plan from the NSX-T 2.0 documentation:

  • Install NSX Manager.
  • Install NSX Controllers.
    • Join NSX Controllers with the management plane.
    • Initialize the control cluster to create a master controller.
    • Join NSX Controllers into a control cluster.
  • Join hypervisor hosts with the management plane.
  • Install NSX Edges.
    • Join NSX Edges with the management plane.
  • Create transport zones and transport nodes.

When this post series is complete, the network topology should be something like this, with two hostswitches configured. The ESXi Hosts will have a Tunnel Endpoint IP address, as will the Edge. The Edge will also have an interface configured for a VLAN uplink.

The NSX-T Transport Node network configuration

In this post I will walk through configuring the Transport Zone, Transport Nodes, Edge Cluster and other configuration required to support the deployment.
[Read more…]

NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: ESXi Host Preparation

by Leave a Comment

Posts in this series
  1. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying NSX Manager
  2. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster
  3. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: ESXi Host Preparation
  4. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Adding a vCenter Compute Manager and Preparing Hosts
  5. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Edge Installation
  6. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Transport Zones and Transport Nodes
  7. NST-T 2.0 Lab Build: Logical Router Configuration
  8. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Upgrading to NSX-T 2.1

Disclaimer! I am learning NSX-T, part of my learning is to deploy in my lab – if I contradict the official docs then go with the docs!

Lab Environment

This NSX-T lab environment is built as a nested lab on my physical hosts. There are four physical ESXi hosts, onto which I will deploy three ESXi VMs, a vCenter Server Appliance, NSX Manager, an NSX Controller cluster, and two NSX Edge Nodes.

Physical, virtual and nested components of the NSX-T lab

Deployment Plan

I will follow the deployment plan from the NSX-T 2.0 documentation:

  • Install NSX Manager.
  • Install NSX Controllers.
    • Join NSX Controllers with the management plane.
    • Initialize the control cluster to create a master controller.
    • Join NSX Controllers into a control cluster.
  • Join hypervisor hosts with the management plane.
  • Install NSX Edges.
    • Join NSX Edges with the management plane.
  • Create transport zones and transport nodes.

When this post series is complete, the network topology should be something like this, with two hostswitches configured. The ESXi Hosts will have a Tunnel Endpoint IP address, as will the Edge. The Edge will also have an interface configured for a VLAN uplink.

The NSX-T Transport Node network configuration

In this post I will walk through configuring the Transport Zone, Transport Nodes, Edge Cluster and other configuration required to support the deployment.
[Read more…]

NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster

by Leave a Comment

Posts in this series
  1. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying NSX Manager
  2. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster
  3. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: ESXi Host Preparation
  4. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Adding a vCenter Compute Manager and Preparing Hosts
  5. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Edge Installation
  6. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Transport Zones and Transport Nodes
  7. NST-T 2.0 Lab Build: Logical Router Configuration
  8. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Upgrading to NSX-T 2.1

Disclaimer! I am learning NSX-T, part of my learning is to deploy in my lab – if I contradict the official docs then go with the docs!

Lab Environment

This NSX-T lab environment is built as a nested lab on my physical hosts. There are four physical ESXi hosts, onto which I will deploy three ESXi VMs, a vCenter Server Appliance, NSX Manager, an NSX Controller cluster, and two NSX Edge Nodes.

Physical, virtual and nested components of the NSX-T lab

Deployment Plan

I will follow the deployment plan from the NSX-T 2.0 documentation:

  • Install NSX Manager.
  • Install NSX Controllers.
    • Join NSX Controllers with the management plane.
    • Initialize the control cluster to create a master controller.
    • Join NSX Controllers into a control cluster.
  • Join hypervisor hosts with the management plane.
  • Install NSX Edges.
    • Join NSX Edges with the management plane.
  • Create transport zones and transport nodes.

When this post series is complete, the network topology should be something like this, with two hostswitches configured. The ESXi Hosts will have a Tunnel Endpoint IP address, as will the Edge. The Edge will also have an interface configured for a VLAN uplink.

The NSX-T Transport Node network configuration

In this post I will walk through deploying the NSX Controllers and creating the NSX Controller Cluster.
[Read more…]

NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying NSX Manager

by 4 Comments

Posts in this series
  1. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying NSX Manager
  2. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Deploying Controller Cluster
  3. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: ESXi Host Preparation
  4. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Adding a vCenter Compute Manager and Preparing Hosts
  5. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Edge Installation
  6. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Transport Zones and Transport Nodes
  7. NST-T 2.0 Lab Build: Logical Router Configuration
  8. NSX-T 2.0 Lab Build: Upgrading to NSX-T 2.1

Disclaimer! I am learning NSX-T, part of my learning is to deploy in my lab – if I contradict the official docs then go with the docs!

Lab Environment

This NSX-T lab environment is built as a nested lab on my physical hosts. There are four physical ESXi hosts, onto which I will deploy three ESXi VMs, a vCenter Server Appliance, NSX Manager, an NSX Controller cluster, and two NSX Edge Nodes.

Physical, virtual and nested components of the NSX-T lab

Deployment Plan

I will follow the deployment plan from the NSX-T 2.0 documentation:

  • Install NSX Manager.
  • Install NSX Controllers.
    • Join NSX Controllers with the management plane.
    • Initialize the control cluster to create a master controller.
    • Join NSX Controllers into a control cluster.
  • Join hypervisor hosts with the management plane.
  • Install NSX Edges.
    • Join NSX Edges with the management plane.
  • Create transport zones and transport nodes.

When this post series is complete, the network topology should be something like this, with two hostswitches configured. The ESXi Hosts will have a Tunnel Endpoint IP address, as will the Edge. The Edge will also have an interface configured for a VLAN uplink.

The NSX-T Transport Node network configuration

In this post I will walk through deploying and configuring the NSX Manager.
[Read more…]

Book Review: VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive

by Leave a Comment

The Host Resources Deep Dive book by Frank Denneman and Niels Hagoort has been one of the most widely anticipated books in the VMware community – previous deep dive books by Frank (co-authored with Duncan Epping), tantalising blog posts and captivating presentations have whet the appetite for the last year or so. Having sat through some of these presentations at VMUGs and VMworld I can tell you the depth and understanding that the authors bring to the table is immense.

I have not rushed to write a review of this book for two reasons, firstly I wanted to do it justice, and that meant that I needed to read it properly. The second reason is that this is a big book with well over 560 pages of content, and that requires some time!

Not a light read…

[Read more…]

PowerShell: Deploying vCenter High Availability in Advanced Mode

by 1 Comment

With the release of vSphere 6.5, VMware upped the game for vCenter High Availability (vCHA) and introduced an active/passive/witness cluster setup to provide a failover cluster for vCenter Server Appliances. The diagram below shows the architecture of the solution.

Deploying vCHA can be done in two modes – “Basic” and “Advanced”. You can use Basic mode if the vCenter you want to be HA is managing the hosts it resides on – in this scenario the wizard configures your vCenter and deploys the Passive and Witness nodes for you. If you have a management cluster for your vCenter Server, or you are deploying a nested environment, you need to use the advanced mode – in this scenario you must configure your active node, deploy clones for the passive and witness nodes, then enable the configuration.

The ever-there-first William Lam has written an excellent PowerShell module for vCHA in Basic mode, which gave me a massive head start when looking at the code for Advanced mode. I will hopefully contributing part of my code to this module to extend it.

For those who just want the script, check out my GitHub repository – HA vCenter Deploy [Read more…]

Lab notes: Upgrading vSphere 6.0 and NSX 6.2 to vSphere 6.5a and NSX 6.3

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been holding off upgrading my lab to vSphere 6.5  because NSX 6.2.x doesn’t support it. With the release of NSX 6.3 and vSphere 6.5a, I can now upgrade.

The sequence of the upgrade is slightly different to the generic one published by VMware because vSphere 6.5 isn’t supported with NSX 6.2. If follows that I need to upgrade NSX to 6.3 (which supports vSphere 6.0u2) before I can upgrade vSphere to 6.5a.

  1. Upgrade NSX Manager
  2. Upgrade NSX Controllers
  3. Upgrade NSX Host Clusters
  4. Update VXLAN port
  5. Upgrade NSX Edges
  6. Run Migration Assistant on VUM server
  7. Upgrade Platform Services Controller
  8. Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance
  9. Upgrade ESXi Hosts
  10. Upgrade VM Hardware and Tools

[Read more…]