VCF 9.1 - Side-loading VCF binaries into VCF Installer & Fleet Depot Service for Air-Gapped Environments

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 continues to support side-loading, or direct upload, of VCF binaries into the VCF Installer, similar to VCF 9.0. However, there is now an additional workflow required after the VCF Fleet has been deployed, where the VCF management component binaries must also be uploaded to the new Fleet Depot Service.

When using either an Online or Offline VCF Software Depot, the Fleet Depot Service automatically retrieves the required VCF binaries from the configured source. However, when using a "Disconnected" or local depot, users must now manually upload those binaries into the Fleet Depot Service to support Day-N operations such as deploying optional VCF components including Log Management, Realtime Metrics and VCF Operations for Networks, as well as provisioning new VCF Instances and Domains.

Having recently gone through this workflow myself (detailed instructions below), I think customers with air-gapped requirements will have a much better experience using a VCF Offline Depot. It works just as well within those network constraints and avoids the need to manually upload binaries to multiple locations, especially for customers managing a large number of deployments.

Step 1 - Download the VCF 9.1 binaries using VCF Download Tool (VCFDT)

Step 2 - Upload the VCF 9.1 downloaded binary directory via SCP to the VCF Installer (e.g. /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/VCF910/). Once completed you should have a structure that looks like the following with the respective binaries in each directory.

If you used the root user (disabled by default), you will need to update the directory ownership and permissions by running the following:

chown vcf_lcm:vcf -R /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/VCF910/
chmod 750 -R /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/VCF910/

Step 3 - Upload the VCFDT tar (e.g. vcf-download-tool-9.1.0.0.25371089.tar.gz) to VCF Installer and install by running the following:

mkdir /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/vcf-download

mv vcf-download-tool-9.1.0.0.25371089.tar.gz /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/vcf-download
cd /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/vcf-download
tar -zxvf vcf-download-tool-9.1.0.0.25371089.tar.gz

chown vcf_lcm:vcf -R /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/vcf-download
chmod 750 -R /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/vcf-download

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/vcf-download/bin' >> /root/.bash_profile
. /root/.bash_profile

Step 4 - Create a text file that contains the VCF Installer admin credentials, which I am calling /root/vcf-installer-admin-password.txt and then run the following command (replace with your environment details) which will begin the upload process.

vcf-download-tool binaries upload -d /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/VCF910/ -f sddcm01.vcf.lab -u admin@local --sddc-manager-user-password-file /root/vcf-installer-admin-password.txt --ignoreConsent

Step 5 - Once all the VCF binaries have been imported into the VCF Installer, you can now login to your VCF Installer UI and start a new VCF Fleet deployment which will now source the binaries that you had directly uploaded.

Step 6 - Once your VCF Fleet has been deployed, there is an additional step that is required in 9.1 compared to 9.0 where VCF management component binaries need to be uploaded into the new Fleet Depot Service, since we are not using a VCF Offline Depot.

Currently, there is not a UI interface for managing the binaries within the Fleet Depot Service but you can use VCFDT. Initially, the Fleet Depot Service will not contain any binaries, which you can confirm by rnning the following command (Fleet Depot Service FQDN can be found by going into VCF Operations and navigate to Build->Software Depot)

vcf-download-tool depot binaries list --ops-fqdn=vcf01.vcf.lab --ops-auth-source=LOCAL --ops-user=admin --ops-user-password-file=/Users/lamw/vcf_operations_pass.txt --depot-fqdn=vcf-flt01.vcf.lab --vcf-version=9.1.0.0

To upload your downloaded VCF binaries, you have two options:

The first option is to upload all files within your downloaded VCF binaries (e.g. /Volumes/Storage/Software/VCF910), the main downside is that VCFDT must tar up the entire directory, before it can upload which means you may need up to 2x the storage space from where you are performing the operation.

vcf-download-tool depot binaries upload --ops-fqdn=vcf01.vcf.lab --ops-auth-source=LOCAL --ops-user=admin --ops-user-password-file=/Users/lamw/vcf_operations_pass.txt --depot-fqdn=vcf-flt01.vcf.lab --vcf-version=9.1.0.0 --depot-store=/Volumes/Storage/Software/VCF910 --sku=VCF --type=INSTALL

Alternatively, you can upload individual components which will still be tar'ed up but at least you only need the additional amount of space for that given component.

vcf-download-tool depot binaries upload --ops-fqdn=vcf01.vcf.lab --ops-auth-source=LOCAL --ops-user=admin --ops-user-password-file=/Users/lamw/vcf_operations_pass.txt --depot-fqdn=vcf-flt01.vcf.lab --vcf-version=9.1.0.0 --depot-store=/Volumes/Storage/Software/VCF910 --sku=VCF --type=INSTALL --component VROPS

Below are the list of VCF Components and their IDs that will need to be in your Fleet Depot Service before you can deploy additional VCF Components or VCF Instances.

Once you have uploaded all your desired installation and/or upgrade component binaries, we can view and manage the uploaded components with VCFDT.

Note: The core SDDC components (vCenter/ESX/NSX) continues to reside within SDDC Manager, which already contains the installation binaries as part of your initial VCF Fleet Deployment, so those binaries do not need to be uploaded to Fleet Depot Service.