WilliamLam.com

Increasing VCF Installer & SDDC Manager Timeout for NSX Deployment

by // 3 Comments

For resource constrained environments, deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) can take longer, especially when deploying on top of a Nested ESXi configuration. However, the VCF Installer does provide a robust retry function that typically will resolve most intermediate issues.

With that said, for environments that are more resource constrained, you may notice the NSX Manager component fails to complete its initialization within the default timeout period. Users can increase the timeout by adding nsxt.manager.wait.minutes to increase the time out (minutes) that VCF Installer / SDDC Manager will wait for NSX to be ready.

echo "nsxt.manager.wait.minutes=180" >> /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application-prod.properties
echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

Note: SDDC Manager is responsible for deploying NSX, so the setting above should be applied to SDDC Manager. The default behavior of the VCF Installer is to switch to the SDDC Manager function, which means the setting above is actually applied to the VCF Installer unless you are overriding this behavior within the JSON deployment file.

If you need to increase the timeout for the NSX Edge Deployment, users can add edge.node.vm.creation.max.wait.minutes to increase the time out (minutes) that VCF Installer / SDDC Manager will wait for the NSX Edge to be ready.

echo "edge.node.vm.creation.max.wait.minutes=90" >> /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application-prod.properties
echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

Note: Settings above are applicable for both VCF 5.x and VCF 9.x

[Read more...]

Flexible Combinations with VCF Fleet Deployment Models 

by // 2 Comments

When deploying a new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Fleet, users can choose from two different deployment models: Simple (one-node) or High-Availability (3-node) within the VCF Installer, which applies to the VCF Automation, VCF Operations and NSX Manager components.


Here is a quick visual that represents the two different deployment models:


While the VCF Installer UI only provides two deployment options, the underlying VCF platform can actually support a combination of simple and HA deployment for the individual components based on your needs.

[Read more...]

Quick Tip: Workaround for NSX Edge Upgrade to VCF 9.0.1 running AMD Ryzen CPUs

by // 5 Comments

If you are planning to upgrade to latest release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.1 and you are using an AMD Ryzen (consumer) processor, you will need to apply an additional workaround after your NSX Edges have been upgraded, for proper functionality. This is similar to the workaround that I had shared back in 2020, which is needed when deploying a new VCF 9.x environment due to the incompatibility of NSX Edges running on an AMD Ryzen CPU.

UPDATE (01/20/26) - VCF 9.0.2, the structure of the config.py has changed, you will need to identify the correct lines to comment out the AMD section. There is a more simpler workaround that can now be applied for all VCF releases, which you can find more details in this blog post HERE.

After the NSX Edge node has been upgraded, the modifications to the original system files are not persisted and we need to re-apply the changes before the NSX Edge nodes will run properly.

Thanks to Tomas Fojta for sharing this tidbit while upgrading his environment, which happens to run on an AMD Ryzen system.

Step 1 - SSH to the NSX Edge node as root

Step 2 - Edit /os_bak/opt/vmware/nsx-edge/bin/config.py and comment out L192-193 containing the AMD section and that will allow the NSX Edge to properly startup and complete the upgrade flow.