VMware Cloud Foundation and SDDC Manager

from the Hydra High Council Aug 20th 2019

In one of our previous blogs, located here -> https://www.hydra1303.com/bottom-line/vmware-cloud-foundation-basics/ we discussed VMware Cloud Foundation at a high level. In this blog, we will discuss at a high level one of the components that help to automate the deployment of our SDDC environment, as well as managing the lifecycle of our SDDC. That component is SDDC Manager.

SDDC Manager is the solution that allows us to quickly and efficiently install vSphere, vSAN and NSX (NSX-V and/or NSX-T). SDDC Manager will also handle the configuration, patching and upgrading of those solutions all from one central point of management. The implementation of the technologies listed above is based on a prescriptive data center architecture, which is based off VMware Validated Designs (VVD). Link to release notes for SDDC 4.3 VVD- https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Validated-Design/4.3/rn/vmware-validated-design-43-release-notes.html

Workload Domains

A Workload Domain is a logical abstraction of our private cloud capacity that is automatically provisioned by SDDC Manager. The Workload Domain provides a unit of consumption at the SDDC level by presenting and integrated selection of compute, storage and network resources to be consumed by our workloads. Each Workload Domain will have its own vCenter Server and may have as many host and clusters as a single vCenter Server instance can handle.

SDDC Manger provides a way for us to automate the expansion of an existing Workload Domain as well as the deletion of Workload Domains.

Currently, the maximum number of workload domains is 15. That number includes the 1 management domain that we must have, and up to 14 virtual infrastructure (VI) workload domains, of which each that can have multiple ESXi clusters. This maximum value is based off the maximum number of vCenter Server instances that can be configured in enhanced linked mode.

See limits here- https://configmax.vmware.com

SDDC Manager Dashboard

We will take a quick look at the dashboard. In the image below, we can see that we have 2 Workload Domains, 1 Management Domain and 1 VI Domain. We can also see the number of host that have been commissioned and the type of storage they are using (Hybrid and/or All Flash). On the right side of the screen we can see the recent task and see that SDDC Manger has deployed vRealize Operations and validated the deployment parameters, as well as other task.

Verifying Host in SDDC Manager

From the main page, expand "Inventory" on the left side of the screen and click on host. Here you will see a list of 7 host (4 associated with Management Workload and 3 in the NFS Workload), their associated IP, the status of the host, host state, cluster membership, CPU usage, Memory usage, storage type, and data storage type.

Next time we explore the process of creating a Workload Domain. Until then, thanks and have a great week!