A VMware Telco Cloud Operations deployment is composed of a set of virtual machines (VMs) deployed on VMware ESXi hypervisors. It is recommended, but not required, that the ESXi infrastructure on which the VMware Telco Cloud Operations is deployed be managed by VMware vCenter.

Role for Each Virtual Machine

Each virtual machine (or node) in the cluster must have one of the following roles.
Virtual Machine Node Description
control-plane-node The node that hosts the user interface, and generally has lower CPU and memory requirements than other nodes,
elasticworker The node that hosts the main data store for the cluster and generally has larger storage requirements than other nodes.
arangoworker The node that hosts the main data bus for the cluster.
kafkaworker The node htat hosts the topology store for the cluster.
domainmanagers The node that hosts the data collectors for the cluster.

Hardware Requirements

A VMware Telco Cloud Operations deployment requires that sufficient virtual CPU, memory, and disk space be available to support the deployment of the desired VMware Telco Cloud Operations footprint. It is recommended, but not required, that each of the VMware Telco Cloud Operations VMs be deployed on a different ESXi for optimal performance.

The recommendation is that each ESXi is provisioned with additional headroom beyond the minimum required CPU and RAM to host the virtual machines. The recommendations are one additional CPU and 6 additional GBs.

Footprint Specification

The following tables specify the requirements for the deployment of different footprints. The number of virtual CPUs, main memory (RAM), and the total disk size for each virtual machine (node) is listed. The value under Hard Disk 3 Size indicates the size of the data disk on each virtual machine and is included in the Total Disk Size value. After deploying the OVA for each VM, users must ensure the VM hardware specifications match the table below for a whichever footprint they choose.

If deploying VMware Telco Cloud Operations manually, users should configure the number of CPUs, memory and only resize the VMs Hard Disk 3 to match the followoing values. Refer to the Manual Deployment process for configuration steps.

If using the automated Deploy-Tool the configuration is done by the tool, no action required.

Extra Small (2.5 K) Footprint

For an Extra Small (2.5 K) footprint, a VMware Telco Cloud Operations deployment is composed of five virtual machines, using a total of 2,344 GB of available disk storage, 16 virtual CPUs, and 108 GB of RAM. The CPU and disk requirements of the five virtual machines are summarized as follows:

Node CPU RAM (GB) Disk (GB) Hard Disk 3 Size (GB)
Control Plane Node (control-plane-node) 2 8 364 100
Worker 1 (elasticworker) 3 24 1,188 1,024
Worker 2 (arangoworker) 4 24 264 100
Worker 3 (kafkaworker) 4 24 264 100
Worker 4 (domainmanager) 3 28 264 100
Total 16 108 2,344

Small (25 K) Footprint

For a Small (25 K) footprint, a VMware Telco Cloud Operations deployment is made up of five virtual machines, using a total of 12 TB (11,960 GB) of available disk storage, 38 virtual CPUs, and 128 GB of RAM. The CPU and disk requirements of the five virtual machines are summarized as follows:
Node CPU RAM (GB) Disk (GB) Hard Disk 3 Size (GB)
Control Plane Node (control-plane-node) 2 8 364 100
Worker 1 (elasticworker) 8 24 10,404 10,240
Worker 2 (arangoworker) 12 34 264 100
Worker 3 (kafkaworker) 12 34 464 300
Worker 4 (domainmanager) 4 28 464 300
Total 38 128 11,960

Medium (50 K) Footprint

For a Medium (50 K) footprint, a VMware Telco Cloud Operations deployment is made up of five virtual machines, using a approximately of 23 TB (22,800 GB) total of available disk storage, 70 virtual CPUs, and 212 GB of RAM. The CPU and disk requirements of the five virtual machines are summarized as follows:
Node CPU RAM (GB) Disk (GB) Hard Disk 3 Size (GB)
Control Plane Node (control-plane-node) 2 8 364 100
Worker 1 (elasticworker) 16 36 20,644 20,480
Worker 2 (arangoworker) 22 54 264 100
Worker 3 (kafkaworker) 22 66 764 600
Worker 4 (domainmanager) 8 48 764 600
Total 70 212 22,800

vCenter

It is recommended that one or more VMware Telco Cloud Operations ESXis and VMs are managed by vCenter. Additional resources might be required to host a vCenter when one is not already available.
Note: The VMware Telco Cloud Operations automated deployment tool requires that the target ESXi infrastructure is managed by vCenter.

Web Browsers

The following web browsers are supported:

Browser Version
Google Chrome 87 or later
Mozilla Firefox 68 or later

Software

The following software versions are supported:
  • ESXi 6.7 and 7.0
  • vCenter 6.7 and 7.0

Network

The following describes networking requirements and recommendations for the VMware Telco Cloud Operations deployment.
Networking Description
Network Connectivity Connectivity is between vCenter and ESXi(s)
IP Addresses Use IPv4 addressing. IPv6 addressing is not supported.
Host Topology

It is strongly recommended to create a cluster and add all ESXi(s) to it (use vSphere HA and other cluster-wide features.

Deployment to ESXi(s) not in the cluster are supported.

Placement of all ESXi(s) should be either in a cluster or all out of the cluster.
Virtual Machine Deployment (based on topology)

1. By specifying only the cluster name, vSphere determines the ESXi to deploy each VM to.

2. By specifying only the ESXi IP addresses. Two possibilities:

- If ESXi(s) are in a cluster, each VM is deployed to the specified ESXi; however, if DRS is turned on, then vSphere determines the ESXi.

- If ESXi(s) are not in a cluster, the VM is deployed to the specified ESXi.

Storage

It is strongly recommended shared storage is accessible by ESXi(s) (required for vSphere HA and other cluster-wide features). The following is an example for vSAN:
  • Directly attached local storage on each ESXi also supported
  • Datastores should be configured
Note: It is highly desirable the user deploying VMware Telco Cloud Operations be familiar with SSH, be able to SSH to a host after deployment, and can run basic shell commands. In Windows, use PuTTY for this purpose.