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 environmental requirements, VxRail needs to have its private IP address changed and the certificate for VxRail Manager needs to be updated with the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). These steps will be referred to in future posts when deployment features are discussed. Let’s take a look at how to accomplish this.
Change VxRail Manager IP Address
When the VxRail system is powered on for the first time VxRail Manager is set to a default IP address of 192.168.10.200. There are various ways to change the IP address for VxRail Manager, but the easiest way is to use the API browser that’s built into VxRail Manager to send an API call to update it. The API browser can be accessed by browsing to https://192.168.10.200/rest/vxm/api-doc.html#/operations/v1_network_vxm_post and providing the new IP address, gateway, subnet mask, and VLAN ID (if applicable) and pressing send request. The response will show the status of the request in the response body section.
Update VxRail Manager Certificate
Once VxRail Manager has been re-addressed and is accessible, open an SSH session to it using the mystic user. Elevate privileges using the su command and providing the root user password. Next, navigate to the /mystic directory and find the generate_ssl.sh script. Execute the script and provide it with the FQDN of VxRail Manager. The script will update the certificate for VxRail Manager and should result in a congratulations message after the script is complete.
Now that the that the prerequisites have been met, the user should be able to login to SDDC Manager and create a new workload domain. The image below is the very first step for workload domain creation starting with VCF on VxRail 4.5 when using workflow optimization. WFO is an enhanced workflow that allows the end user to provide input into a single interface/script that coordinates API calls between VxRail Manager API and SDDC Manager. So instead of jumping back and forth between various end points, a workflow is used. We can dive into WFO UI and WFO script options in other posts.
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