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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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Quick Tip - Deploy OVF/OVA with Basic Authentication Endpoint

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As part of rebuilding my VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.1 environment, a refresh of my VCF (Offline) Software Depot was needed to include the latest 9.0.1 binaries including various OVF/OVAs like Data Services Manager (DSM).

My VCF Software Depot has been configured with basic authentication, which is a requirement for the VCF Installer. This meant before I can import the DSM OVA into vCenter Server, I typically would need to download a local copy of the OVA, which got me thinking about this workflow ...

Can an OVF/OVA be deployed directly from a web server that requires basic authentication? 🤔

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Automating VCF Automation (VCFA) Configuration using VCFA Terraform Provider

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I recently rebuilt my VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) lab environment to run the latest VCF 9.0.1 release. While most of the deployment and configuration has been fully automated, I was dreading the VMware Cloud Foundation Automation (VCFA) setup, mainly as the initial configuration can be a bit involved.


Having some experience with configuring VCFA manually, I wanted to take the opportunity to automate as much of the setup as I could, so the next that I need to rebuild, it is not an issue for me, which is typically the case as I like to automate everything!

My automation approach was going to be leveraging the newly published Terraform Provider for VCFA, this was on my todo list but I finally got a chance to play with it over the weekend in my lab.

I was blown away at how the automation was at configuring VCFA, the same manual tasks could  easily 20min+ and using the TP4VCFA, it was done in under 30 seconds! 🤯

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