VCF redux – 5.1, PowerFlex and ESXi 8

Last fall, I wrote a post on running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.5 on PowerFlex, though at the time VCF 5.0 was available (June 2023). The reason I could not take advantage of version 5.0 was because its BOM included vSphere version 8 for the vCenter and ESXi hosts which, at the time, was not certified with PowerFlex. Since that time, VMware has certified PowerFlex on vSphere 8 for NFS, SDC, and TCP – the relevant KB is here. Therefore VCF 5.1 (latest build) can be used with PowerFlex.

VCF 5.1

While I did update the paper referenced in the post above to include the use of vSphere 8, in particular with SDC on PowerFlex custom nodes, I had cause to build a new VCF 5.1 for a customer recently and thought it might be useful to go over my experience in comparison to VCF 4.x.

Fortunately, the installation of version 5 is essentially the same as 4, therefore let’s just look at the differences or quirks.

Workbooks

In the deployment guide for 5.1, VMware writes frequently of a workbook called the VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 Planning and Preparation Workbook. In fact VMware has a link to the zip file that contains it. When I looked through the book, it seemed very similar to the type of xls I used in 4.5. Here is a sample:

There are various tabs for entering in all the details of the environment, along with formulas in the cells to match the features you want to enable. But if you try to upload this xls into the Cloud Builder Appliance, you will get an error. That is because there is a second workbook, called the Deployment Parameter Workbook. This spreadsheet is a duplicate (with a couple minor changes) of the one used in the 4.5 implementation and also has the tabs for adding environment information. You must use this one (vcf-ems-deployment-parameter) during deployment. The problem is that VMware does not provide a link for it. Instead they direct you to VMware Customer Connect where you’ll need to navigate to VCF and downloads:

 

I don’t know why they couldn’t provide the link in the documentation like the planning one, seeing as this one is far more important, but it did cause me grief so now it won’t for you.

NFS workload domain and nodes

NFS is the only principal storage you can use with PowerFlex 4.x to create the workload domain. VCF permits the use of only two nodes for the domain if using NFS (rather than three) and Lifecycle Management for the vSphere cluster. In the paper I demonstrate how to import an image so it can be used during deployment, allowing two nodes. In 5.1, this does not work the same way. Instead, the image option is available for you, and you can simply choose the one already there from the management domain (which has the same ESXi version). The problem, however, is that there is a bug preventing the use of two nodes instead of three. You will still see this message on the host screen saying you only need 2 hosts, but even if you have two available in your inventory, they will not show up.

To get around the bug I had to commission a third host. Once I did that, they all showed up. At that point you could select two, but I deployed all three. Be sure your NICs match between the hosts. Unlike 4.5, you aren’t required to use vmnic0 and vmnic1, but you will need to use two that are the same numbers across all hosts. I still had to re-alias my third host to match (covered in the paper).

SDC

If you plan on using SDC as supplemental storage in your workload domain, do NOT install the package before deploying the workload domain. That also holds true for any network changes on the ESXi host that may be required to communicate with the PowerFlex. It is unlikely your VCF network setup with NSX is going to be the same as the one for PowerFlex. You will most likely have different VLANs for the data and management networks. Wait until after workload deployment to create your distributed switch and/or port groups on the new vCenter. VMware wants a clean box for deployment and will fail host commission otherwise.

UI

The UI is essentially the same as 4.5. Here is the dashboard for 5.1:

And here is the NFS (three node) and vSAN environments:

And my supplemental SDC storage on PowerFlex:

vSphere 8 on PowerFlex builds

We aren’t yet shipping vSphere 8 with say the PowerFlex appliances, but if you have an existing setup you can install the SDC for ESXi 8 on your hosts and begin consuming PowerFlex storage (per versions supported in the KB), with or without VCF.