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Integrated NSX-T deployment in vSphere 7.0 Update 3 fails with timeout

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One of the new features highlighted in the latest vSphere 7.0 Update 3 release is the integrated NSX-T deployment and configuration workflow found directly within the vSphere UI as shown in the screenshot below.


After you click on the the "Install NSX" button, it will prompt for the NSX-T OVA and then take users through a guided wizard to on deploying and configuring NSX-T. I noticed that a few users were reporting a timeout issue after running through the workflow:

Cannot complete the operation: See the event log for details. Timeout: The task did not complete within the expected time span

I have not used this plugin before, so I was not sure what the issue was until I came across this Tweet from Validimir Velikov, a vSphere UI Engineer who had worked on the integrated NSX-T plugin and shared the reason for this error. A newer version of NSX-T will be needed to use this feature as the vSphere UI expects a "callback" from NSX-T Manager when the deployment and configuration is complete, which the current released version of NSX-T (3.1.3.1) does not support.

I think we could have provided a better user experience by first checking the NSX-T OVA version and ensuring that it meets the minimum version that supports this capability. Hopefully this is something we can improve upon in the future.

Configuring NSX Advanced Load Balancer with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) on VMware Cloud on AWS

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One of the exciting new features of the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) 1.3 release is the support for NSX Advanced Load Balancer (NSX ALB) as a Layer-4 load balancer solution for your Kubernetes (K8s) based workloads. Most recently, there were a couple of customer inquiries asking whether TKG 1.3 and NSX ALB is supported on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS) and the answer is yes!


I suspect part of the reason on why this question came up is that it may have been difficult to find a clear support stance for this configuration and although there is some documentation in the AVI Portal for installing NSX ALB on VMConAWS, it certainly was not easy to find. I personally also found the instructions to a be on the lighter side after reading through a few times. Since I already had my TKG Demo Appliance Fling deployed in my VMConAWS SDDC, it was easy enough to un-deploy my existing TKG Management Cluster and set it up with NSX ALB. You can find the detailed instructions below and although the setup of NSX ALB and TKG is similiar to an on-premises vSphere deployment as recently documented by Cormac Hogan, there are still some subtle differences, especially if you are not placing both TKG and NSX ALB systems all on the same single, which you may find in demos 🙂

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Automating default admin password change for NSX Advanced Load Balancer (NSX ALB)

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Over the weekend I got a chance to deploy my first vSphere with Tanzu environment using the new NSX Advanced Load Balancer (NSX ALB) which I had shared on Twitter.

This was also my first time getting exposed to NSX ALB (formally AVI Networks) and this detailed blog post from my buddy Cormac Hogan was instrumental in helping me quickly get started and get into the specific configurations needed for a two network design with vSphere with Tanzu. For me personally, there were just too many different configuration pages a user needed to navigate to and context switching between them made it non-intuitive for a new user like myself. After going through this once, I knew Automation was the next step for me and this was also an opportunity to try out the NSX ALB API, which I also have never used before.

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