Import vCenter Server with Single ESX Host as new VCF Workload Domain?

A useful feature in VCF Operations 9.0 is the ability to create a new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Workload Domain from an existing vSphere environment, providing seamless onboarding into a VCF Fleet and getting access to the new VCF Fleet Management capabilities.

To access the VCF Import feature, navigate to the inventory view of your VCF Instance within VCF Operations and select Add Workload Domain->Import a vCenter Server to begin the workflow. A variety of deployment configurations are supported with VCF Import, you can refer to the official documentation for the complete list of requirement and minimum versions.

Deploying VCF 9.0 in a lab environment is an easy way to get hands on experience with this workflow. I recently installed ESX 9.0.1 onto a single ASUS NUC 15 Pro with a self managing vCenter Server for trying out the import scenario but I ran into the following pre-check error: Please ensure there is at least one cluster has more than 1 host

I guess I need to have more than one ESX host before I can proceed ... or do I? 🤔

We can indeed bypass the minimum ESX host pre-check by removing one of the guardrails that has been put in place.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by Broadcom, use at your own risk.

Step 1 - SSH to SDDC Manager appliance and then edit /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/assessment/guardrails/operations/import/import.json and search for the following snippet and remove it from the file.

    "id": "conforming-cluster-present-check",
    "type": "NATIVE",
    "path": "conforming-cluster-present-check",
    "internalErrorCode": "CrossProductValidatorLocalizableMessage.CONFORMING_CLUSTER_VALIDATION",
    "extraArgs": {
        "checkType": "${checkType}"
    },
    "dependencies": [
        {
            "entityType": "cluster",
            "requiredProperties": [
                "numOfHostsInCluster"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The import.json is loaded on-demanded, no service restart is required.

Step 2 - If we now re-run the validation checks, we are no longer running into the ESX host check!