The announcement of VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on Dell VxRail 8.0.200 Release introduces the ability for VxRail WLD hosts to use vSAN remote datastores as principal storage. The new release introduces many new features which can be explored here and here, but this post will show how to deploy a WLD using VxRail Dynamic Nodes and a vSAN remote datastore as... Continue Reading →
VCF on VxRail: Create vLCM WLD Using WFO Script
Recently I made a post about creating a vLCM enabled WLD using WFO UI. However, sometimes the WFO UI may not have a certain capability or feature yet. In those cases, there is a workflow optimization script that can be used to gather all the information for the new WLD, and then make an API... Continue Reading →
VCF on VxRail: Create vLCM WLD Using WFO UI
The announcement of VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on Dell VxRail 8.0.200 Release introduces the ability for Management and VI Workload domains (WLD) to be lifecycle managed using a cluster image instead of legacy LCM methods. This new release introduces many new features which can be explored here and here. To understand more about vLCM when... Continue Reading →
VxRail: Enabling vLCM Using VxRail API
As part of the VxRail 8.0.200 release, it is now possible to enable vLCM on a VxRail cluster using the public API. Enabling vLCM using the VxRail API can be accomplished using an API client like Postman, curl commands, or directly from VxRail Manager's built in API browser. There are a few different ways to... Continue Reading →
VCF on VxRail: WFO Script ‘Retry’
Starting with VCF on VxRail 4.3, Dell and VMware co-engineered a new way of submit workflows in VCF on VxRail. The VCF on VxRail 4.3 Release Notes call out this enhancement as workflow improvements for better VxRail integration. It is also commonly referred to as Workflow Optimization or WFO. There are two types of WFO... Continue Reading →
VCF on VxRail: 4.x to 5.x Upgrade
One of the most cumbersome tasks for VCF customers and administrators has always been performing upgrades. Prior to VCF 5.0 the only way to "upgrade" between major versions like VCF 3.x to VCF 4.x, required a lot of manual intervention, orchestration tooling and a playbook for the support or services representative to run through. These... Continue Reading →
VCF on VxRail: Prerequisites for Workload Domain Creation
When deploying a new workload domain for a VCF on VxRail instance, there are several prerequisites that need to be understood and/or executed before beginning. All the high-level prerequisites like character length, licensing, IP information, password strength, and much more can be found on the VCF documentation site surrounding this topic. After fully understanding the... Continue Reading →
VxRail: Enabling vLCM Using VxRail UI
VMware announced vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) with the launch of vSphere 7.0. vLCM allows customers to update their ESXi hosts using a cluster image instead of traditional VMware Update Manager (VUM) baselines. The neat thing about vLCM is that cluster images can contain server firmware as well ESXi updates and drivers. VxRail already has the... Continue Reading →
VCF on VxRail: Async Patch Tool Using PowerShell
Ironically enough, shortly after posting Using VCF's Async Patch Tool on Windows I was contacted by a VMware colleague who had seen the post. As it turns out, his team at VMware had been working on including PowerShell as an option for the Async Patch Tool. Big shout out to Ryan Johnson over at VMware... Continue Reading →
VCF on VxRail: Async Patch Tool Using Windows
When using VMware Cloud Foundation's Async Patch Tool there are two different methods that can be used depending on the environment's connectivity to the internet - the offline method and the online method. The online method is relatively straight forward and is extracted into the SDDC Manager virtual machine and SDDC Manager which allows the... Continue Reading →