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VMware Cloud Foundation with a single ESXi host for Workload Domain?

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Earlier this week, we demonstrated that we could deploy a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Management Domain using just a single ESXi host. In addition, we can further optimize the deployment for homelab purposes by removing the CPU and memory reservations for NSX when deploying either a VCF Management or Workload Domain.

The most logical question that I am sure some of you are probably asking ... besides, how much time I actually spent testing these scenarios out!? (I rather not comment 😵‍💫) ... is what about deploying a VCF Workload Domain with just a single ESXi host? 🤔


You guessed it, it is definitely possible!

Disclaimer: This is not supported by VMware, use at your own risk. As of writing this blog post, this trick is functional with the latest VCF 4.5 release.

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Removing NSX CPU/Memory reservations when deploying a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Management or Workload Domain

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Now that you can deploy a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Management Domain onto a single ESXi host for homelab purposes, another challenge that can arise is simply having enough resources to deploy either a Management or Workload Domain.

While you do need to meet some minimum bar in terms of the amount of CPU and memory resources required to run the various components within a VCF Management or Workload Domain, I found that NSX resource requirements does add another challenge. The NSX Unified Appliance comes configured with both CPU and memory reservations, this means unless you can reserve both the required CPU and Memory for NSX, you can not power on NSX and the deployment will continue to retry until it eventually gives up. 

Again, for a production environment, this is not a problem but for homelab or testing purposes, this can further restrict users from exploring the VCF solution. 

I figured why not just reduce or even remove the CPU and memory reservations from the NSX OVA within the VMware Cloud Builder which is responsible for the initial VCF bringup? Well, I quickly found out why as the ISO which contains all the OVA is mounted as read-only 🙂


Luckily, all hope is not lost and this is where I learned to leverage a neat Linux kernel capability called OverlayFS which can help us! With a bit of trial/error, I was able to remove the CPU and memory reservations from the NSX appliance that is used during the deployment of a VCF Management Domain. In addition, I also ran into the same challenge when deploying a VCF Workload Domain and luckily, that was a much easier solution to figure out.

Disclaimer: This is not supported by VMware, use at your own risk. As of writing this blog post, this trick is functional on latest VCF 4.5 release.

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VMware Cloud Foundation with a single ESXi host for Management Domain?

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By default, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) requires a minimum of 4 ESXi hosts to construct the Management Domain which is fine for a production environment, but it can be a challenge for those interested in explore VCF in a homelab setting.

I recently came to learn about a really cool tidbit from one of our VCF Engineers on how you can actually deploy a VCF Management Domain using just a single ESXi host, ideal for a homelab setup! 😍


Not only could this benefit users in deploying a physical VCF setup but it would also benefit anyone using my Automated Lab Deployment Script for VCF, which makes it super easy by leveraging my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance VMs.


In fact, that was how I quickly verified this trick works using my VCF automation script 😀

The way that this work is a configuration change to Cloud Builder to tell it to allow a single ESXi host to be used and it will simply setup a single node vSAN Cluster, which is typically how you would bootstrap if you were doing a greenfield deployment. The only difference here is that instead of adding additional 3 x ESXi hosts to provide redundancy for Management Domain, it simply is relaxing that requirement and thus allowing for a single ESXi host. vSAN is still a requirement for VCF Management Domain, so ensure you can meet those requirements still.

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