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Author: ronaldpj

VCF Exams (Administrator & Architect) – Experience

VCF Exams (Administrator & Architect) – Experience

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As a VMware by Broadcom employee in the VCF Business Unit, you can do three free exams per calendar year, on a voucher, so it makes it fairly riskless to try them out, without (a lot of) preparation. So in my case, I first tried the VCF VCP Administrator exam (2V0-11.24, https://www.broadcom.com/support/education/vmware/certification/vcp-vcf-administrator) in October, and today (about a month later) I tried the VCF VCP Architect exam (Exam 2V0-13.24, https://www.broadcom.com/support/education/vmware/certification/vcp-vcf-architect). In this blog, I’ll give a little bit of insight…

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Create a VLAN-based Cluster in VCF

Create a VLAN-based Cluster in VCF

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One of my customers asked a question about why a VLAN-based Transport Zone was not added to a cluster when it was created through the SDDC Manager. After some looking into this, and with the help of our Engineering organization, we found out why that is. In short, it needs to be defined as part of the deployment process, in the “Distributed Switch” section. It is not automatically added to a new cluster. So a short blog about how to…

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vSAN Storage Policy: Content Library

vSAN Storage Policy: Content Library

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I received an interesting question from one of my customers about the behaviour of vSAN with regards to policy changes to a policy which is applied to a content library and then especially the templates that reside within it. The customer told me that when they changed the Default vSAN Policy that was attached to a content library, the OVF-templates inside that content library, were not updated to comply with the changes made to the policy. So I tried that…

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VCF on VCD: Upgrading Aria Components

VCF on VCD: Upgrading Aria Components

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I deployed vRealize Suite LifeCycle Manager earlier (see: https://my-sddc.net/vcf-on-vcd-aria-vrealize-suite-lifecycle-manager/ and https://my-sddc.net/vcf-on-vcd-importing-other-aria-components/) and now want to upgrade them. Since the interoperability between SDDC Manager and Aria Suite LifeCycle Manager is the one I need to look at, it shows me I can upgrade to the latest version currently available, 8.14: But I need to do this in two steps. First upgrade 8.10 to Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.12 and after that, upgrade to 8.14: So I start with downloading the two upgrade…

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VCF on VCD: Importing Other Aria Components

VCF on VCD: Importing Other Aria Components

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First I deployed Aria Suite LifeCycle Manager (although still called vRealize for that version): https://my-sddc.net/vcf-on-vcd-aria-vrealize-suite-lifecycle-manager/, then I deployed vIDM (https://my-sddc.net/vcf-on-vcd-vmware-identity-manager/), but if I now want to deploy additional components, we don’t get to choose the size, below a certain threshold. For instance, if I want to deploy Aria Automation (vRealize Automation), it’s minimum size is clustered. Aria Operations (vRealize Operations or vROPs) is minimum “Medium”: So I will deploy the Aria Suite products manually and then import them into Aria…

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VCF on VCD: Aria/vRealize Suite LifeCycle Manager

VCF on VCD: Aria/vRealize Suite LifeCycle Manager

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After deploying the Edge Clusters on both VCF environments and creating and connecting the T0’s, it’s time to deploy some Aria Suite components. For this I will first be deploying the Aria Suite LifeCycle Manager (or vRealize, as it is still called, because of the version), from within the SDDC Manager. After that is completed, I can use this appliance to deploy and manage the Aria components. This is a split between the two control components SDDC Manager and Aria…

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VCF on VCD: VMware Identity Manager

VCF on VCD: VMware Identity Manager

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After deploying Aria Suite LifeCycle Manager (although it was still called vRealize then), we go and deploy VMware Identity Manager (vIDM). For this we have a couple of requirements: First, we have to populate the ASLCM with the correct product. For now, we are just going to download VMware Identity Manager 3.3.7. For this, we go to: (there are more boxes to the right, but for the sake of grabbing the screen, I omitted those). And click on Add binaries:…

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VCF on VCD: Networking Setup

VCF on VCD: Networking Setup

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Next step in my VCF on VCF journey is building the networking between the two environments. Of course, I have my trusted pfSense appliances that do the routing, but of course, I want to be able to create my own NSX-based virtual network. So the first steps are to create a little design on what I want to accomplish. So in the first phase, I will be creating Edge Node clusters on both VCF WLD’s and configuring BGP between them,…

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VCF on VCD: Replace Hosts in Stretched Cluster

VCF on VCD: Replace Hosts in Stretched Cluster

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From one of my customers, I got a question on how they can downsize a stretched cluster in a VCF environment. This is basically following the first 5 steps in the “Replace a Failed Host in a Stretched Cluster” article: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/5.0/vcf-admin/GUID-92FD3AEE-5B5F-421C-B722-44AE0314D84E.html So I though, I’d try it out. We need to do the following steps: So, first, we get the Host ID’s. For this we go to the “Developer Center” in the SDDC Manager and click on: API Explorer. There…

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VCF on VCD: vSphere Replication

VCF on VCD: vSphere Replication

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Because I have had some issues with my lab in the past (having to rebuild it a couple of times) I switched my storage to iSCSI (see https://my-sddc.net/vcf-on-vcd-iscsi-configuration/), but I also wanted to have another means of redundancy and for that I am using vSphere Replication. I will replicate my two VCF instances to each other. The following setup is what I will be aiming for: So the “odd” volumes are Production and the “even” volumes are Replication (I will…

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