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Improved Workaround for NSX Edge Deployment & Upgrade to VCF 9.0.2 running AMD Ryzen CPUs

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If you are using an AMD Ryzen (Consumer) CPU for your VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) lab environment, you have most likely have applied one of the required workarounds for either installing an NSX Edge (HERE) or upgrading an NSX Edge (HERE).

For those planning to install or upgrade to the latest VCF 9.0.2 patch release, which was just released today, you may come across this issue as shown in the screenshot below when attempting an NSX Edge upgrade.


While I have yet to run through the VCF 9.0.2 upgrade myself, a similar configuration file tweak from within the NSX Edge VM will be required. A colleague recently shared a more optimal trick for bypassing the non-supported AMD processor check, which would be simpler to implement for lab environments.

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

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Increasing VCF Installer & SDDC Manager Timeout for NSX Deployment

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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

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Flexible Combinations with VCF Fleet Deployment Models 

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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.

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