MS-A2: How a Ubiquity Flex 2.5G skips the 10G check in VCF 9.X

VCF 9 and 9.0.1 require 10GB nic.

I use for my homelab the MS-A2 with the 2 x 10GbE Intel X710 SFP+ (NIC 1 & 2 from the left). It is silent and fast and have enough power to run VCF 9!

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So I bought also the  10GbE SFP+ to Copper Transceiver

But when you connect the MS-A2 to USW Flex 2.5G switch on the switch side is 2.5G.

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But on the VMware side is 10GB 😊

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No need to do the following: Disable 10GbE NIC Pre-Check in the VCF 9.0 Installer or

Enhancement in VCF 9.0.1 to bypass vSAN ESA HCL & Host Commission 10GbE NIC Check

It working great! No need to buy expensive 10GB switch!

Top VCF 9 Updates: Installer, NVME, and More

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What are my things I would like to test

  • VCF 9 installer (VCF 9 Beta i looked good)
  • NVME Tiering
  • vSAN ESA Dedub
  • VCF 9 with Ubiquiti
  • Kubernetes Service now includes Windows containerization
  • NSX VPC Support

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The VCF Cloud Foundation Installer makes lives a lot easier! More about this coming very soon

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The VCF Operations Console is looking good! I used it in the VCF 9 beta

More about this also later!

Deploying VCF Workload Domain with One NSX Manager

For your VCF homelab you wan to keep the resources small with a little bit overhead.
In this post I will talk about how i managed to deploy a VCF Workload Domain with a single NSX Manager, instead of the standard three nsx nodes.

Warning: Use this only in a Homelab!

The trick is to SSH into your SDDC Manager using the vcf user, and the password used during bring-up of the management domain.

When logged in, run su and log in as root using the password used during bring-up.

run: vi /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application-prod.properties

Hit i in your keyboard to go into insert mode. Go to the end of the file, and append the following:

nsxt.manager.formfactor=medium
nsxt.manager.resources.validation.skip=true
nsxt.manager.cluster.size=1
nsxt.manager.wait.minutes=120

This will make it so that any workload domain you deploy has one NSX Manager, and that it uses a smaller size. Once done, hit ESC in your keyboard, then type :wq and hit enter to save the file. (w = write, q = quit).

Then run systemctl restart domainmanager and you are good to go!

This worked in my nested Cloud Foundation deployment in my lab running 5.2.1.0.

You will still have to fill in the information for the extra nodes in the UI.

Easy Script to Create DNS Records in VCF Lab

When you build your VCF Lab environment you want to create your DNS records automatically. I use for DNS a Windows Server.

The Script:

function ConvertTo-DecimalIP {
param ([string]$ip)
$parts = $ip.Split(‘.’) | ForEach-Object { [int]$_ }
return ($parts[0] -shl 24) + ($parts[1] -shl 16) + ($parts[2] -shl 8) + $parts[3]
}

function ConvertTo-DottedIP {
param ([int]$intIP)
$part1 = ($intIP -shr 24) -band 0xFF
$part2 = ($intIP -shr 16) -band 0xFF
$part3 = ($intIP -shr 8) -band 0xFF
$part4 = $intIP -band 0xFF
return “$part1.$part2.$part3.$part4”
}

$zone = “testlab.nl”
$startip = “192.168.200.10”

$dnsrecords = “vcf-m01-cb01″,”vcf-m01-sddcm01″,”vcf-m01-esx01″,”vcf-m01-esx02″,”vcf-m01-esx03″,”vcf-m01-esx04″,”vcf-w01-esx02″,”vcf-w01-esx03″,”vcf-w01-esx04″,”vcf-w01-esx04″,”vcf-m01-nsx01a”,”vcf-m01-nsx01b”,”vcf-m01-nsx01c”,”vcf-m01-nsx01″,”vcf-w01-nsx01a”,”vcf-w01-nsx01b”,”vcf-w01-nsx01c”,”vcf-w01-nsx01″,”vcf-m01-vc01″,”vcf-w01-vc01″
$count = $dnsrecords.count

# Convert start IP to decimal

$decimalIP = ConvertTo-DecimalIP $startIP
$i = 0

# Loop and print incremented IPs

foreach ($dnsrecord in $dnsrecords) {
$i -lt
$count;
$i++
$currentDecimalIP = $decimalIP + $i
$currentIP = ConvertTo-DottedIP $currentDecimalIP
Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -Name $dnsrecord -ZoneName $zone -AllowUpdateAny -IPv4Address $currentIP -CreatePtr
Write-Output “DNS record $dnsrecord in $zone with $currentIP is created” -ForegroundColor Green

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