HCL Offline Download for VMware Cloud Foundation

If the SDDC Manager appliance does not have access to the VMware Depot, you can use the Bundle Transfer Utility to manually download the HCL file from the depot on your local computer and then upload them to the SDDC Manager appliance.

If the computer with internet access can only access the internet using a proxy server, use the following options when downloading the HCL:

Option	Description
--proxyServer, --ps	Provide the proxy server FQDN and port. For example: --proxyServer proxy.example.com:3128.
--proxyHttps	Add this option if the proxy server uses HTTPs.
--proxyUser	For a proxy server that requires authentication, enter the user name.
--proxyPasswordFile	For a proxy server that requires authentication, enter the path to a file where the password for proxy authentication is stored. The file content is used as the proxy password. For example, --proxyPasswordFile ../../password.txt.

Example that combines the options:

./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --vsanHclDownload --outputDirectory output-directory --proxyServer proxy.example.com:3128 --proxyUser vmwuser --proxyPasswordFile ../../password.txt --proxyHttps 

Prerequisites

• A Windows or Linux computer with internet connectivity (either directly or through a proxy) for downloading the HCL.
• A Windows or Linux computer with access to the SDDC Manager appliance for uploading the HCL file.
• To upload the HCL file from a Windows computer, you must have OpenSSL installed and configured.
• Configure TCP keepalive in your SSH client to prevent socket connection timeouts when using the Bundle Transfer Utility for long-running operations.

Note: The Bundle Transfer Utility is the only supported method for downloading HCL. Do not use third-party tools or other methods to download HCL.

Procedure

1. Download the most recent version of the Bundle Transfer Utility on a computer with internet access.
   1. Log in to the Broadcom Support Portal and browse to My Downloads > VMware Cloud Foundation.
   2. Click the version of VMware Cloud Foundation to which you are upgrading.
   3. Click Drivers & Tools.
   4. Click the download icon for the Bundle Transfer Utility.
2. Extract lcm-tools-prod.tar.gz.
3. Navigate to the lcm-tools-prod/bin/ and confirm that you have execute permission on all folders.
4. Copy the bundle transfer utility to a computer with access to the SDDC Manager appliance and then copy the bundle transfer utility to the SDDC Manager appliance.
   1. SSH in to the SDDC Manager appliance using the vcf user account.
   2. Enter su to switch to the root user.
   3. Create the lcm-tools directory.

      mkdir /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-tools

      Note: If the /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-tools directory already exists with an older version of the Bundle Transfer Utility, you need to delete contents of the existing directory before proceeding.
   4. Copy the Bundle Transfer Utility file (lcm-tools-prod.tar.gz) that you downloaded in step 1 to the /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-tools directory.
   5. Extract the contents of lcm-tools-prod.tar.gz.

      tar -xvf lcm-tools-prod.tar.gz

   6. Set the permissions for the lcm-tools directory.

      cd /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/

      chown vcf_lcm:vcf -R lcm-tools

      chmod 750 -R lcm-tools

5. On the computer with internet access, download the HCL file.

   ./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --vsanHclDownload --outputDirectory output-directory

   It can also be downloaded to the default path:

   ./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --vsanHclDownload

6. Copy the HCL file to a computer with access to the SDDC Manager appliance.
7. Upload the HCL file to the SDDC Manager appliance.

   ./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --vsanHclUpload --inputDirectory hcl-file-path --sddcMgrFqdn sddc-manager-fqdn --sddcMgrUser user

   output-directory	Path to the directory where the HCL file should be downloaded. If not mentioned the HCL file will be downloaded to default directory (/root/PROD2/vsan/hcl/all.json)
   hcl-file-path	Path from where HCL file should be picked up to upload. e.g /root/testdownload/vsan/hcl/all.json. If not given default will be taken. (/root/PROD2/vsan/hcl/all.json)
   sddc-manager-fqdn	SDDC Manager FQDN. If not given default will be taken.
   user	SDDC Manager user. After this, the tool will prompt for the user password.