Infrastructure Automation validates various prerequisites before beginning the actual deployment.

Different sites have different prerequisites that must be fulfilled before beginning the actual deployment. Infrastructure Automation validates all these prerequisites to ensures easy and fast deployment.
Note: Ensure that you have different vSAN disk sizes for cache and capacity tiers, else the cloud builder may not select the correct cache disk.

Host

  • All hosts in a domain are homogeneous.
  • Each host has a minimum of one solid-state disk (SSD) and three solid-state disk/hard disk drives for vSAN.
  • Each host requires two physical NICs connected to the same physical switch.

Physical Switch

  • Jumbo Frames enabled on the Physical Switch.
  • DHCP enabled on the NSX host overlay network.
  • Each ESXi server has a minimum of two physical NICs connected to the switch in trunk mode. Access to all the VLANs (Management Network, vMotion Network, vSAN, NSX Host Overlay Network, NSX Edge Overlay Network, Uplink 1 and Uplink 2) on the trunk port.

Domain

  • Each domain has a minimum of four hosts.
  • DNS name configured for all the appliances in all the domains.
  • ESXi servers are installed for each domain through the PXE server or an ISO image.
  • A common web server to access the software images at the central site.
  • Central and regional sites have the internet connectivity.

Network

  • VMware Telco Cloud Automation/ VMware Telco Cloud Automation Control Plane can require an unrestricted communication to connect.tec.vmware.com and hybridity-depot.vmware.com over port TCP 443 for license activation and updates.
  • VMware Telco Cloud Automation uses different ports for different services. For details, see VMware Telco Cloud Automation Ports.
  • Time synchronization through NTP for all VLANs.
  • Unique VLANs are created for following networks on the physical switch:
    Network MTU Description
    Management Network 1500 Used to connect the management components of the software like vCenter, ESXi, NSX Manager, VMware Telco Cloud Automation, and VMware Telco Cloud Automation Control Plane.
    vMotion Network 9000 Used for the live migration of the virtual machines. It is a L2 routable network and used only for the vMotion traffic within a data center.
    vSAN 9000 Used for the vSAN traffic. It is a L2 routable network and used only for the vSAN traffic within a data center.
    NSX Host Overlay Network 9000 Used for the NSX Edge overlay traffic. Requires a routable with Host overlay VLAN in the same site. This network requires a DHCP server to provide IPs to the NSX host overlay vmk interfaces. The DHCP pool should equal the number of ESXi hosts on this network.
    NSX Edge Overlay Network 9000 Used for the overlay traffic between the hosts and Edge Appliances.
    Uplink 1 9000 Used for the uplink traffic. Uplink 1 is in the same subnet as the Top of Rack (ToR) switch uplink address.
    Uplink 2 9000 A redundant path for the uplink traffic. Uplink 2 is in the same subnet as the Top of Rack switch uplink address.
  • Each ESXi server has a minimum of two physical NICs connected to the switch in trunk mode. Access to all the VLANs (Management Network, vMotion Network, vSAN, NSX Host Overlay Network, NSX Edge Overlay Network, Uplink 1 and Uplink 2) on the trunk port.
  • Configure the same NTP server on both the Cloud Builder and the ESXi host.
  • Run the command ntpq -pn on both the Cloud Builder and the ESXi host and check if the output of the NTP server shows *.
  • Name resolution through DNS for all appliances in all the domains.
  • DNS records for all appliances with forward and reverse resolution.
    Note: You can create custom naming schemes for the appliances. You can also select the naming schemes from Appliance Naming Scheme from the drop-down menu when configuring the global parameters or override the naming schemes when configuring domains. The options available for appliance naming scheme are:
    • {applianceName}-{domain-Name}
    • {applianceName}
    • Custom
    For example: If the naming scheme is set to {appliancename}-{domainname}, the name for a Virtual Center appliance is vc-cdc1.telco.example.com, where:
    • vc is the appliance name.
    • cdc1 is the domain name.
    • telco.example.com is the DNS suffix.

License

The licenses for the following components are required:
  • VMware vSphere (ESXi)
  • VMware NSX-T Data Center
  • VMware Telco Cloud Automation
  • VMware Telco Cloud Automation Control Plane
  • VMware vCenter Server
  • VMware vSAN
  • (Optional) VMware vRealize Log Insight
Note: The actual license requirements may change based on the components installed.