WilliamLam.com

  • About
    • About
    • Privacy
  • VMware Cloud Foundation
  • VKS
  • Homelab
    • Hardware Options
    • Hardware Reviews
    • Lab Deployment Scripts
    • Nested Virtualization
    • Homelab Podcasts
  • VMware Nostalgia
  • Apple

Automated VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 Import Lab Deployment Script

07.31.2024 by William Lam // 10 Comments

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 had just GA'ed last week and it is a packed release with a ton of new capabilities! Creating a brand new VCF environment (greenfield) is generally much easier than converting an existing vSphere-based environment (brownfield) into a compliant VCF environment, which can be quite challenging and our users have been asking for a better solution.

With VCF 5.2, we now have the ability to import or convert an existing vSphere and vSAN environment into either a VCF Management Domain or Workload Domain using a new VCF Import Tool without needing to rebuild your existing environment!

As with anything I do, I typically want my infrastructure setup be fully automated, so that I can actually spend time exploring the actual capability and not waste time deploying or installing the required prerequisites. After spending a few minutes reading through the VCF Import Tool Scenarios and Considerations, I could adapt my Automated vSphere Lab Deployment scripts (here and here) to automatically deploy the required environment, so that I could quickly try out the new VCF Import Tool.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, VMware Cloud Foundation, vSphere 8.0 Tags // VMware Cloud Foundation

Quick Tip - VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 provisioning fails with Update SDDC Manager with Licensing Information

07.30.2024 by William Lam // 3 Comments

Since the introduction of the License Later feature with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.1.1, I typically deploy my VCF lab without needing any license keys and simply take advantage of the built-in 60 day evaluation period.

I was doing some testing recently with the latest VCF 5.2 release, which had just GA'ed last week and I wanted to use my new VCF licenses which included vCenter Server, ESXi, vSAN and NSX and right before the deployment was about to finish, I ran into the following error Update SDDC Manager with Licensing Information with Cloud Builder:


I thought the error was strange since my license keys had passed the Cloud Builder pre-check, so I had assumed the issue must be something else but after looking at the log file /var/log/operationsmanager.log on SDDC Manager:

Unable to decode the license key XXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-YYYYY

com.vmware.licensecheck.SerialNumException: Invalid serial number: no dormant license file corresponding to the serial number

....

"errorCode":"LICENSE_KEY_NOT_RECOGNISED","arguments":[],"message":"The SDDC Manager is unable to recognize the license key. Try applying the license key to the product.","remediationMessage":"Try applying the license key to the product."

I quickly saw what the problem was which is that SDDC Manager is missing certain dormant license file (DLF) to decode several of the VCF license keys including the new vSAN TiB license which is only supported with vSphere 8.0 Update 3 and later.
[Read more...]

Categories // VMware Cloud Foundation Tags // license, VMware Cloud Foundation

Incorrect guestOS type for Nested ESXi causes vCLS issues with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Holodeck Toolkit

07.03.2024 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Several months back, I started noticing an increase number of folks reporting problems powering on their vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) VM when using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Holodeck Toolkit solution and the following workaround can be applied, which came directly from the Holodeck developers.

While a workaround exists including vCLS script located at C:\VLC\VLC-Holo-Site-1\vclsfix, it was very puzzling because this seems to only happen with the Nested ESXi VMs and the VCF Holodeck Toolkit and it was NOT observed when deploying a regular Nested ESXi environment, but I never took a closer look to see why that might be.

A few weeks back, I recieved an email from Mike Foley (former vSphere HA and vCLS PM), I came to learn the reason folks using the VCF Holodeck Toolkit was seeing this problem and it was specific to that solution due to how the guestOS was configured for the Nested ESXi VMs.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, Nested Virtualization Tags // Nested ESXi, vCLS, VMware Cloud Foundation

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • …
  • 17
  • Next Page »

Search

Thank Author

Author

William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

Connect

  • Bluesky
  • Email
  • GitHub
  • LinkedIn
  • Mastodon
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Recent

  • VCF 9.0 Hardware Considerations 05/30/2025
  • VMware Flings is now available in Free Downloads of Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) 05/19/2025
  • VMUG Connect 2025 - Minimal VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.x in a Box  05/15/2025
  • Programmatically accessing the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG) 05/06/2025
  • Quick Tip - Validating Broadcom Download Token  05/01/2025

Advertisment

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Copyright WilliamLam.com © 2025

 

Loading Comments...