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Automated Nested Lab Deployment on SDDC Part 3: Google VMware Cloud Engine

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In Part 3 of this series, we will be taking a look at deploying our Nested Lab in a Google Cloud VMware Engine environment. One thing you may notice that is different between VMConAWS and AVS is that we are actually running a Nested vSAN on top of the physical vSAN within GCVE. In the current version of GCVE, customers have the ability to "escalate" their privileges from the default and this would allow us to configure the necessary ESXi advanced setting so that we do not have to rely on an NFS setup. For networking, customers also have full access to the NSX-T Manager instance and this means that MAC Learning can be enabled which will allow inner-guest workloads will be able to communicate properly within and outside of the Nested Lab deployment.

Disclaimer: Nested ESXi is not officially supported on Google Cloud VMware Engine or by VMware.

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Automated Nested Lab Deployment on SDDC Part 2: Azure VMware Solution

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In Part 2 of this series, we will be taking a look at deploying our Nested Lab in an Azure VMware Solution environment. Simliar to VMConAWS, we will need to deploy our NFS Photon OS OVA because administrative access to the physical ESXi hosts is not available. This is required to enable an advanced ESXi setting to be able to run Nested vSAN on top of the physical vSAN. From a networking standpoint, customers do have full access to the NSX-T Manager instance and this means that MAC Learning can be enabled which will allow inner-guest workloads will be able to communicate properly within and outside of the Nested Lab deployment.

Disclaimer: Nested ESXi is not officially supported on Azure VMware Solution or by VMware.

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Automated Nested Lab Deployment on SDDC Part 1: VMware Cloud on AWS

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While preparing for this years VMworld, I had the unique opportunity to work across a number of VMware Cloud SDDC solutions such as VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS), Azure VMware Solution (AVS), Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) and Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS). During the the development of several demos, I found it invaluable to be able to deploy a Nested vSphere environment to validate my configurations prior to connecting our real vSphere on-premises infrastructure.

Putting aside VMworld demos, this can certainly be extended to other use cases such as accelerated pilots, proof of concepts and lab/development purposes. Customers have been leveraging Nested Virtualization technology for more than a decade plus now and it definitely makes sense that they would also want to do the same for certain workloads running within a VMware Cloud SDDC. With that said, Nested ESXi is not officially supported by VMware or on any other VMware-based platform.

As part of building my VMworld demos, I also had spent some time on creating some automation that would make it easier for me to re-deploy these Nested Lab environments and also being aware of the specific VMware Cloud SDDC solutions, so that I only have a single script to maintain. In case folks are also interested in being able to do this, you can follow this 4-part blog series which I will be kicking it off with VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS).

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