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New SDDC Linking capability for VMware Cloud on AWS

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Back in September, the VMware Transit Connect (vTGW) on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS) feature was released and provides users a simplified way of connecting AWS VPCs, AWS Direct Connect Gateways and customer on-premises datacenter from a networking connectivity standpoint. As part of this feature, a new logical construct called an SDDC Group was created which allows customers to easily apply common networking connectivity policies across a number of SDDCs versus having to manage them separately which can quickly get complex from an operational point of view.

The SDDC Group not only simplified the initial setup, but it also simplifies Day 2 Operations when new SDDCs are provisioned and added to the SDDC group. The networking policies that have been configured at the SDDC Group will automatically apply to all new SDDCs which makes this a really slick solution. As SDDCs are removed from the SDDC Group, the related configurations are automatically un-provisioning and detached from the respective networking resources.


Simplified network connectivity using an SDDC Group was just the beginning! Today, the VMware Cloud team has released a new feature built on top of the SDDC Groups construct called vCenter Linking for SDDC Groups. Just as the name implies, customers can now easily "Link" multiple vCenter Servers within an SDDC Group enabling a single view of all vCenter Servers using any one of the vSphere UIs within the SDDC. For those familiar with Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM), this is basically that but for SDDCs running in the Cloud!

The workflow could not have been simpler and last week I got try it out and was quite impressed! Under the hood, this leverages the vCenter Convergence capability and when enabling vCenter Linking, the service automatically handles all those details including the necessary NSX-T firewall rules that need to be configured across ALL SDDC to allow for secured connectivity. Just imagined having to do this each time a new SDDC is added or remove, you need to manually go to all SDDC and update or create new firewall rules!? This is all hidden away from the user and by simply associating SDDCs in the SDDC Group, the configurations are applied automatically for you.

One question that I did have while trying out this new feature was how does this work with existing features such as Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) and ELM?

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Stateless ESXi-Arm with Raspberry Pi

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I am super excited to be able to finally share, what I think, is a really cool ESXi-Arm solution which has been an evolution of this and this. This solution also incorporates a number of automation techniques I have shared over the years when it comes to ESXi scripted installation aka Kickstart, so it was really neat to all those things get pulled into a single solution. Lastly, I also want to give huge thanks to Cyprien Laplace who threw the initial challenge my way after I had shared how to perform an ESXi-Arm scripted installation without using SD Card.

ESXi-x86 can be deployed using either a stateful or stateless installation. In the latter case, ESXi is booted over the network using the vSphere Auto Deploy feature in vCenter Server which does not require any local media for ESXi. Upon attaching itself to vCenter Server, Auto Deploy then leverages vSphere Host Profiles and its rules engine to determine which configurations or profiles should be applied to ensure the ESXi hosts are configured per their desired stated. Here is a quick video overview of how Auto Deploy and Host Profiles work.

Fundamentally, vSphere Auto Deploy and Host Profiles can also work with ESXi-Arm but today, vCenter Server would require some code modification for this to actually work.

OK, so am I teasing you with something that does not exists? Nope, but I just wanted to help set the context 🙂

The solution that I have created boots ESXi-Arm over the network in a "stateless" manner, so there is no need for an SD Card or USB device plugged into the Raspberry Pi (rPI). In addition to the ESXi-Arm files, it also includes a custom payload which runs to retrieve additional configurations which can automatically join a desired vCenter Server as well as apply further customizations of an ESXi-Arm host. As you can see, this solution behaves similar to that of vSphere Auto Deploy and Host Profiles but does not use either of these vSphere features and works with the ESXi-Arm Fling right now.

Technically speaking, these techniques can also be applied to ESXi-x86 but I will leave that to the reader for further exploration.

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Automating HAProxy VM deployment with 3-NIC configuration using PowerCLI

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When deploying the HAProxy VM as part of vSphere with Tanzu, customers have the option of deploying the HAProxy VM using either a 2-NIC or 3-NIC configuration. The default OVF Deployment Option is the 2-NIC design called "Default" and the 3-NIC design is called "Frontend".

From an Automation point of view, you can use either OVFTool or PowerCLI to automate the deployment. For a 2-NIC example, you can refer to my Automated vSphere with Tanzu Lab Deployment Script. However, for the 3-NIC example, a few folks were running into some issues when using PowerCLI for the automation.

The main issue is that because the default OVF Deployment Option is the 2-NIC design (Default), the two additional OVF properties frontend_ip and frontend_gateway is basically hidden when processing the OVF properties when PowerCLI.

Note: You can view these optional properties by running the following OVFTool command: ovftool --X:enableHiddenProperties vmware-haproxy-v0.1.8.ova


Even if you specified the "Frontend" OVF Deployment Option, PowerCLI does not seem to have the logic to retrieve the other optional parameters and hence can not be set as part of the initial deployment.

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Custom Virtual Machine Class Types with vSphere with Tanzu

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When you deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Cluster using the integrated TKG Service in vSphere with Tanzu, you can specify a Virtual Machine Class Type which determines the amount of CPU and Memory resources that are allocated for both the Control Plane and/or Worker Node VMs for your TKG Cluster.

Here is a sample YAML specification that uses the best-effort-xsmall VM class type for both Control Plane and Worker Node, but you can certainly override and choose different classes based on your requirements.

Today, the are a total of 16 VM Class types that you can select from, however these are not customizable which is something that has been coming up more recently. The vSphere with Tanzu team is aware of this request and is working on a solution that not only makes customizing CPU and Memory easier but also supporting storage customization. As you can see from the table below, 16GB is only supported configuration today.


In the mean time, if you need a supported path for customizing your TKG Guest Clusters, one option is to use the TKG Standalone / MultiCloud CLI, which can be used with a vSphere with Tanzu Cluster. You will need to deploy an additional TKG Management Cluster (basically a few VMs), but once you have that, you can override CPU, Memory and Storage of both the Control Plane and Worker Nodes using the following environment variables:

  • VSPHERE_WORKER_NUM_CPUS
  • VSPHERE_WORKER_MEM_MIB
  • VSPHERE_WORKER_DISK_GIB
  • VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_NUM_CPUS
  • VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_MEM_MIB
  • VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_DISK_GIB

If you are interested, the easiest way to get started is by using my TKG Demo Appliance Fling which was just recently updated to the latest TKG 1.2 release which has support for K8s v1.19 which is currently not available on vSphere with Tanzu.

Now, you might ask, would it be possible to create your own custom VM class types using vSphere with Tanzu? Well .... keep reading to find out 🙂

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk. These custom changes can potentially impact upgrades or automatically be reverted upon the next update or upgrade. You have been warned.

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Automated Nested Lab Deployment on SDDC Part 4: Oracle Cloud VMware Solution

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In this final blog series, we are now going to take a look at deploying our Nested Lab in an Oracle Cloud VMware Solution environment. Similiar to GCVE, we also will have the ability to run Nested vSAN on top of the physical vSAN within OCVS and by default, customers are provided with the full administrator credentials. For networking, customers also have full access to the NSX-T Manager instance and this means that MAC Learning can be enabled and 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 Oracle Cloud VMware Solution or by VMware.

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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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