Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
175 lines (129 loc) · 14.7 KB

vpc-bm-vmware.md

File metadata and controls

175 lines (129 loc) · 14.7 KB
subcollection copyright lastupdated lasttested content-type services account-plan completion-time
solution-tutorials
years
2023
2023-01-19
tutorial
vmwaresolutions, vpc
paid
8h

{:step: data-tutorial-type='step'} {:java: #java .ph data-hd-programlang='java'} {:swift: #swift .ph data-hd-programlang='swift'} {:ios: #ios data-hd-operatingsystem="ios"} {:android: #android data-hd-operatingsystem="android"} {:shortdesc: .shortdesc} {:new_window: target="_blank"} {:codeblock: .codeblock} {:screen: .screen} {:pre: .pre} {:deprecated: .deprecated} {:important: .important} {:note: .note} {:tip: .tip} {:preview: .preview}

Deploying Roll Your Own VMware on {{site.data.keyword.bm_is_full_notm}}

{: #vpc-bm-vmware} {: toc-content-type="tutorial"} {: toc-services="vmwaresolutions, vpc"} {: toc-completion-time="8h"}

This tutorial may incur costs. Use the Cost Estimator to generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage. {: tip}

IBM Cloud™ has a number of offerings for VMware deployments in Classic. These can be classified and described as:

{{site.data.keyword.bm_is_full_notm}} environment provide a new option to deploy VMware on IBM Cloud. Currently the {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} environment provides only the automated vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) Operating System image deployment to Intel Bare Metals on VPC. Therefore, you need to manually install and configure the required VMware components, such as ESXi hosts, vCenter, vSAN or NSX-T components.

This tutorial walks you through creating your own {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} with multiple subnets as required to support vSphere networking and the provisioning of {{site.data.keyword.bm_is_full_notm}} (BMS) for a basic VMware vSphere deployment. After the {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} and {{site.data.keyword.bm_is_short}} have been provisioned, the tutorial covers a manual deployment of the vCenter, creating VMware compute cluster with vSAN or NFS shared storage options. The tutorial also covers optional features, such as using {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} network for VMware Virtual Machine networking. {: shortdesc}

This tutorial assumes a working knowledge of VMware vSphere Hypervisor and vCenter Server 7.0 as well as {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} zones, regions, prefixes, subnets and security groups that build the base {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} networking and are used to support the vSphere deployment. More information about VMware products can be found in VMware Docs. {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} concepts and the networking constructs are explained in the VPC pages of the IBM Cloud™ Docs. More information about planning and deploying bare metal servers on VPC can be found in the Bare metal server section of {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} pages.
{: note}

Objectives

{: #vpc-bm-vmware-objectives}

  • Understand the Virtual Private Cloud infrastructure used for VMware vSphere deployment.
  • Create a {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}, subnets and bare metal server instances for a vSphere deployment.
  • Manually deploy vCenter and create a compute cluster.
  • Create shared storage for your compute cluster either by using vSAN or VPC file share (NFS).
  • Use {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} networking for your VMware Virtual Machines.

The following diagram presents an overview of the base deployment in {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}. The deployment is based on {{site.data.keyword.bm_is_full}} and uses subnets to host the servers' network interfaces and access control lists and security groups to secure the network access. VMware vSAN with local ESXi host embedded SSDs or {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} file share are the storage options for datastores to be used for VMware Virtual Machines. {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} subnets can also be used to host network interfaces of VMware Virtual machines. Alternatively NSX-T can be used for Virtual Machines, but this is not mandatory.

Architecture Overview - Base Deployment{: caption="Figure 1. Architecture Overview - Base Deployment" caption-side="bottom"}

You need to plan and decide your {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} networking solution for the VMware deployment before you start. This tutorial provides a simple example where a fully dedicated {{site.data.keyword.vpc_full}} is created for the VMware deployment, but you may customise your network solution if you so wish. You may also use IBM Cloud interconnectivity options. These are recommended for enterprise connectivity use cases. {: important}

You need to plan and decide your VMware deployments storage solution before you order the bare metal servers. If you use NFS backed {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} file share as the primary storage, you can start with a minimum of 2 bare metal servers with and select a profile starting with bx2-, which includes a local SATA M.2 mirrored drive. If you plan to use vSAN, you need to select a minimum of 3 bare metal servers with and select a profile starting with bx2d-, which includes a local SATA M.2 mirrored drive and a number of NVMe U.2 SSDs.
{: important}

Deploying VMware on {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} requires multiple steps. Follow steps 1 through 4 below for an initial setup for your base VMware deployment. After vCenter and the base setup has been completed, you can create or attach shared storage for your cluster based on your preference by following either step 5 or 6.

  1. Provision a {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} for VMware deployment
  2. Provision {{site.data.keyword.dns_full_notm}} for VMware deployment
  3. Provision bare metal servers for VMware deployment
  4. Provision vCenter Appliance
  5. OPTIONAL STORAGE: Provision vSAN storage cluster
  6. OPTIONAL STORAGE: Provision NFS storage and attach to cluster

After the base VMware cluster has been deployed and configured, the Virtual Machine networking needs to be setup. Here you have two alternatives: deploy VMware VMs integrated with your {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} subnets or deploy VMware VMs on VMware NSX-T overlay segments.

When using {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} subnets for your VMware Virtual Machines, proceed with the following steps.

  1. OPTIONAL - VPC Integrated Networking: Provision {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} Subnets and configure Distributed Virtual Switch Portgroups for VMs
  2. OPTIONAL - VPC Integrated Networking: Provision {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} Public Gateways and Floating IPs for VMware Virtual Machines

vCenter and other management servers may use the connectivity patterns described in the steps above. For example, {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} public gateway can be used when downloading vCenter updates from Vmware. {: note}

You have the option to use NSX-T for your VMware Virtual Machines and an overview for a NSX-T based deployment is show below. NSX-T deployment starts with provisioning {{site.data.keyword.bm_is_short}} VLAN interfaces for each NSX-T component attched to {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} subnet. Then you deploy NSX-T on the VMware cluster and add transport nodes to the solution. In the last step, you create NSX-T Tier 0 logical router (also known as T0 gateway) to provide routed north-south traffic between NSX-T overlay networks and {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}.

NSX-T based VMware Solution in {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}{: caption="Figure 2. NSX-T based VMware Solution in {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}" caption-side="bottom"}

If you want to use NSX-T in {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}, review VMware Solution Architectures for {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} first. Then proceed with the following steps.

  1. OPTIONAL - NSX-T: Provision {{site.data.keyword.bm_is_short}} network interfaces for NSX-T
  2. OPTIONAL - NSX-T: Deploy {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} NSX-T
  3. OPTIONAL - NSX-T: Configure routing for {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} and NSX-T Logical Routers

Before you begin

{: #vpc-bm-vmware-prereqs}

Make sure you understand the {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} concepts and {{site.data.keyword.bm_is_full_notm}} capabilities. Also, review VMware Solution Architectures for {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}.

This tutorial requires:

  • An {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} billable account,
  • {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} CLI,
    • Install {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} command line (CLI) tooling. See Getting started with the IBM Cloud CLI.
    • Install {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}} plugin (vpc-infrastructure)
    • Install {{site.data.keyword.dns_short}} plugin (cloud-dns-services)
  • Install jq i.e. json query on your workstation used to query JSON files.
  • SSH key
    • Create an SSH key on your workstation and import it to the {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}.
    • If you don't already have an SSH key, see the instructions for creating a key for {{site.data.keyword.vpc_short}}.

You will find instructions to download and install these tools for your operating environment in the Getting started with tutorials guide.

To avoid the installation of these tools you can use the {{site.data.keyword.cloud-shell_short}} from the {{site.data.keyword.cloud_notm}} console. {: tip}

Target a resource group

{: #vpc-bm-vmware-rg} {: step}

  1. Login with IBM Cloud CLI with username and password, or use the API key.

  2. Specify the target resource group for your resources. You can list the available resource groups with the following command.

    ibmcloud resource groups
Retrieving all resource groups under account 1b0834ebce7f4b94983d856f532ebfe2 as [email protected]...
OK
Name           ID                                 Default Group   State   
default        28b0e7d18da9417ea85b2ba308088657   true            ACTIVE

  3. If you want to use the default resource group, you can set your target resource group with the following command:

    VMWARE_RG=$(ibmcloud resource groups --output json | jq -r '.[] | select(.name == "default")'.id)

    {: codeblock}

    If you want to create a new resource group for your VMware assets e.g. with a name VMware, you can use the following commands:

    VMWARE_RG_NAME="VMware"

    {: codeblock}

    VMWARE_RG=$(ibmcloud resource group-create $VMWARE_RG_NAME --output json | jq -r .id)

    {: codeblock}

  4. Then set your target to the wanted resource group.

    ibmcloud target -g $VMWARE_RG

    {: codeblock}

Next steps

{: #vpc-bm-vmware-next-steps}

The next step in the tutorial series is: