Part 1: Onboarding Brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF as a "Management Workload Domain"

This blog post provides a comprehensive, a detailed step-by-step guide to seamlessly "How to Convert/Import an Existing Brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF".

With VCF 5.2, we now have new feature introduced "VCF Import Tool", to convert or import an existing brownfield vSphere and vSAN environment into either a VCF Management Domain or VI Workload Domain without needing to rebuild your existing environment.

If you do not already have SDDC Manager deployed, you can deploy it on an existing vSphere environment and use the VCF Import Tool to convert that environment to the VMware Cloud Foundation management domain.

If SDDC Manager is already deployed, you can use the VCF Import Tool to import existing vSphere environments as VI workload domains.

Refer to below official documentations for more on supported & considerations:

Supported Scenarios for Converting or Importing vSphere Environments to VMware Cloud Foundation

Considerations Before Converting or Importing Existing vSphere Environments into VMware Cloud Foundation

Note:

If you haven’t seen the release notes yet, please check out: VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 Release Notes

This blog is in two parts to cover Convert (for Management WLD) and Import (for VI WLD) both:

Part 1 : Onboarding a Brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF as a Management Workload Domain

Part 2 : Onboarding a Brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF as a VI Workload Domain

Let's get started:

Part 1 : Onboarding a Brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF as a Management Workload Domain

Overview of Existing vSphere Environment Setup before Convert to VCF Management Workload Domain: 

Now let’s do a quick walkthrough of the existing vSphere environment and confirm that all the pre-requisites & considerations are met before converting this vSphere Env to VCF Management Domain.

• 4 ESXi hosts (8.0.3) With FQDN and Static IPs

• vCenter (8.0.3)

• vSAN Cluster – Single Site

• Mgt, vMotion, vSAN, VM Network – Backed by vDS

• DRS - Set To Fully-Automated

• HA – HA On

All the vmkernel ports are configured with static IP addresses.

DRS mode is set to fully-automated:

Single site vSAN cluster:

Now, we have validated and met all the pre-requisites for a successful VCF convert. Let’s move on and download the required software for VCF convert/import:

Required Software for Converting:

Download the below three softwares from https://support.broadcom.com/

1. VCF SDDC Manager Appliance

2. VCF Import Tool

3. VMware Software Install Bundle - NSX_T_MANAGER 4.2.1.0

Run a Precheck on the Target vCenter Before Conversion:

The precheck determines if the environment is ready and can be converted to the management domain

• Copy the VCF Import Tool to the Target vCenter Appliance

• Run a Precheck on the Target vCenter Before Conversion

Copy the VCF Import Tool to the Target vCenter & Extract:

1. SSH to the vCenter Server as root

2. Change the default shell from /bin/appliancesh to /bin/bash to allow copy to vCenter

   # chsh -s /bin/bash root

3. Create a directory for the VCF Import Tool. I created "vcfimport"

   # mkdir /tmp/vcfimport

4. Copy over the required software into the directory

5. Extract the bundle

# tar -xvf vcf-brownfield-import-<buildnumber>.tar.gz

Now, run the Precheck on the Target vCenter Before Conversion:

Success! Pre-checks on the target vCenter have passed successfully, and we are good to proceed further now.

Deploy SDDC Manager Appliance:

Deploy the SDDC Manager appliance on the target vCenter before converting the vCenter to the VMware Cloud Foundation management domain.

Once the appliance is deployed successfully, we will power on and wait for the shell to initialize. The UI will not initialize at this moment, and we need to wait until the management workload domain is imported successfully.

Official document on how to deploy SDDC: Deploy the SDDC Manager Appliance on the Target vCenter

Upload the Software to SDDC Manager now and perform detailed checks on the target vCenter:

Success! Checks from the SDDC on the target vCenter have passed successfully, we are good to proceed further now.

Uploading NSX bundles and generating NSX deployment specification:

To deploy NSX Manager when you convert or import a vSphere environment into VMware Cloud Foundation, you must create an NSX deployment specification.

• Download NSX software

• Upload it to sddc folder location "/nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle"

• Create nsx_spec.json with all your information for NSX IPs/fqdn, and upload it to sddc, I copied to "/home/vcf"

We will deploy NSX manager cluster along with the workload domain convert process. This workflow covers the below tasks:

• Deploy a three-node NSX manager cluster

• Assign cluster VIP to the NSX manager cluster

• Add the management vCenter server as a compute manager in NSX

• Prepares the management vSphere cluster with NSX on DVPG

Follow the official below document to create your NSX JSON file with all required values, as I have created and uploaded to SDDC for NSX deployment.

Generate an NSX Deployment Specification for Converting or Importing Existing vSphere Environments

Note - Make sure DNS host records created for the NSX management cluster

Now, Onboard vSphere Environment into Management WLD in SDDC Manager:

At this stage, we are all good to run the VCF Import Tool and start the conversion of existing vSphere Environment into VCF Management Workload Domain

Prerequisites

Take a snapshot of SDDC Manager.

Procedure

1. SSH to the SDDC Manager VM as user vcf.

2. Navigate to the directory where you copied the VCF Import Tool.

3. Run the vcf_brownfield.py script and enter the required passwords when prompted.

   #python3 vcf_brownfield.py convert --vcenter '<vcenter-fqdn>' --sso-user '<sso-user>' --domain-name '<wld-domain-name>' --nsx-deployment-spec-path '<nsx-deployment-json-spec-path>'

4. Inspect the command outputs highlighted in yellow. All should be status code 200.

5. Switch to the root account upon successful conversion.

6. Restart all SDDC Manager services.

   #echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

7. Once all the SDDC Manager services have restarted the new workload domain (management domain or VI workload domain) should appear in the SDDC Manager UI.

Below are the screenshots to start Convert:

Convert started:

Once started, for me it took more than 2 hours going through all the validation & conversion process, as you can see below. Keep monitoring for any error or failure. If encounter with any failure, check the logs and fix to proceed further.

Success!! We can see now above, the VCF Convert operation has gone successful.

Perform Health-Check Validation On the Converted Management Domain:

We will now perform a quick walkthrough of the SDDC manager console and validate the imported management workload domain. Below are the methods.

1. SDDC UI

2. SDDC CLI

3. SDDC Pre-check

SDDC UI:

SDDC CLI:

You can run the "Health-check" CLI to generate the comprehensive report, as shown below.

SDDC Pre-check:

Let’s run the Prechecks from the SDDC Manager on the management workload domain for general upgrade readiness and see if there are any critical errors or warnings.

Congratulations!!!!!!

We have successfully performed conversion of an existing brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF Management Domain now.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can effectively onboard your existing vSphere environment as a Management workload domain into VCF. This will enable you to leverage the benefits of VCF, such as simplified management, enhanced security, and automated operations.

In the next part (Part 2) of this series, we will delve into "Onboarding a Brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF as a VI Workload Domain"

Part 2 link : Part 2: Onboarding a Brownfield vSphere Environment into VCF as a "VI Workload Domain"