VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.0 is now generally available for customers to upgrade and I had a chance to play with it in my homelab before it was released.
One change that I had noticed in the new version of the VMware Cloud Builder for VCF 5.0 compared to VCF 4.5 is the introduction of a new 10GbE pre-check to ensure that your physical ESXi hosts met the minimum networking requirement. For a production deployment, this pre-check makes a ton of sense but for a homelab/development environment where you may not have 10GbE connectivity, this is certainly not ideal, especially as this was possible with VCF 4.5.
With VCF 5.0, this new pre-check is considered an error and will prevent you from continuing the VCF deployment as you can see from the error message below.
Fortunately, I was able to find an easy workaround to the issue that would still allow users to deploy the latest VCF 5.0 without 10GbE networking! 😀
The failed pre-check is considered an error when using the VMware Cloud Builder UI, but when using the VMware Cloud Builder API, it is simply a warning and will allow the installation to proceed.
The following PowerShell snippet can be used (replace the values from within your environment) that will deploy VCF 5.0 using the VMware Cloud Builder API and providing the same VCF JSON deployment spec that you would use with the VMware Cloud Builder UI.
$cloudBuilderIP = "192.168.30.190"
$cloudBuilderUser = "admin"
$cloudBuilderPass = "VMware123!"
$mgmtDomainJson = "vcf50-management-domain-example.json"
#### DO NOT EDIT BEYOND HERE ####
$inputJson = Get-Content -Raw $mgmtDomainJson
$pwd = ConvertTo-SecureString $cloudBuilderPass -AsPlainText -Force
$cred = New-Object Management.Automation.PSCredential ($cloudBuilderUser,$pwd)
$bringupAPIParms = @{
Uri = "https://${cloudBuilderIP}/v1/sddcs"
Method = 'POST'
Body = $inputJson
ContentType = 'application/json'
Credential = $cred
}
$bringupAPIReturn = Invoke-RestMethod @bringupAPIParms -SkipCertificateCheck
Write-Host "Open browser to the VMware Cloud Builder UI to monitor deployment progress ...
Once the VCF deployment has been accepted using the VMware Cloud Builder API, then you can open a browser to the VMware Cloud UI and continue to monitor the progress of your deployment as if you had used the UI to initiate the deployment.
Note: If you are using the VCF Deployment Workbook XLXS and need to convert that into JSON format, please see this blog post HERE or you can check out the VMware Cloud Foundation Configuration File Generator Fling
Hey William,
Thanks for all your hard work! This has allowed me to explore VCF on my limited lab budget 🙂 After successfully deploying VCF 5.0 on a single NUC, is there are a way to add more hosts to the management domain and bypass the 10GbE requirement?
I second this. Do you know of a way to add addtional hosts without failing the 10GbE check? I also buiilt out my VCF management domain using this method, but want to add a 5th hosts.
It should be the same workaround, leverage the SDDCm API for Host Commissioning rather than the UI
I gave that a try using the SDDC API and it also fails the 10GB check. It would appear that the Cloud Build API and SDDC API have different severity definitions for the 10GB nic missing.
For reference, here is what I did...
I used Postman
Commission Host POST to https:///v1/hosts
Body:
[
{
"fqdn": "mylab.fqdn.com",
"networkPoolId": "<mypoolID",
"password": "",
"storageType": "VSAN_ESA",
"username": "root",
"vvolStorageProtocolType": null,
"networkPoolName": "",
"sshThumbprint": null,
"sslThumbprint": null
}
]
I got a response of IN_PROGRESS
In the SDDC Manager, I saw the host commission start, but it then failed with:
"Host must have minimum two 10Gig NIC(s). Host does not have any 10G Speed NIC(s)."
You can use the VCF Import tool and use the sync option. This will add the hosts to the existing cluster. You'll need to ensure the NSX profile includes the new hosts. There are blogs out there with the steps.
Follow up. I never found a way around the 10gb checks. But my hosts are the Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F based systems, so they do have 2 10Gig nics. I just made those active on the 5th host. I know that will not help others who do not have 10Gig nics available, so it would still be nice to see if there some kind of workaround for adding addtional hosts after the Cloud Builder start up.
Do you know if I amend the script that we can commission hosts for a workload domain?