Configuring vCenter, vSAN, and VMware Cloud Console

This chapter focuses on how to manage a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), VM Storage Policies, compute policies, and the Elastic Distributed Resource Scheduler (Elastic DRS) mechanism for automatically scaling the cluster based on resource usage through the VMware Cloud (VMC) console.

You will learn about the essential management of workloads, vSAN storage, and hosts and clusters required for day-to-day operations.

The following are the topics to be covered in this chapter:

• Managing VMware Cloud on AWS
• vSAN storage policies
• Compute policies
• Contacting VMware for support and maintenance

Managing VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS management and operations are possible using several management consoles, including the following:

• The familiar VMware vSphere Web Client to manage workloads (VMs) in your deployment
• An SDDC console to manage capacity, activate add-ons, and configure advanced options for your deployment
• A separate standalone NSX UI to manage networking in your SDDC, including creating workload segments, external connectivity, firewall configuration, and troubleshooting

In this chapter, we cover the functionality of the SDDC console. In the first section, we’ll go through the various aspects of the configuration of an SDDC.

SDDC console overview

Once the VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC is deployed in a VMware Cloud Organization, you will use the central Cloud Services Portal (CSP) under the VMware Cloud service to manage your SDDC deployment. The following screenshot shows a VMware Cloud SDDC console view:

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vSAN storage policies

Virtual SAN (vSAN) is a key component of VMware Cloud on AWS, providing software-defined storage capabilities. All the ESXi hosts in a cluster establish communication through a dedicated vSAN network. By combining their disk groups, the hosts are consolidated into the vSAN datastore, which employs a non-volatile memory express (NVMe) all-flash configuration for cache and capacity tiers.

Datastores serve as logical storage containers for storing VM files. They provide a standardized approach to storing VM files, abstracting the underlying storage system details. Additionally, datastores are useful for housing content libraries containing ISO images and VM templates.

The vSAN Object Store Filesystem (OSFS) allows the combination of Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) volumes from each host into a single datastore, enabling streamlined management.

To leverage the capabilities of vSAN, customers can configure VM Storage Policies tailored to their workload...

Compute Policies

VMware Cloud on AWS comes with DRS automatically enabled. The DRS parameters at the cluster level are controlled by VMware and cannot be adjusted by the cloudadmin role. However, customers have the ability to create compute policies that incorporate affinity or anti-affinity rules using vSphere categories and tags within the SDDC. These policies help govern workload placement and influence DRS behavior.

There are several types of Compute Policies available:

• VM-host affinity rules: These rules ensure that VMs are placed on the same host to optimize performance. For example, they can be used to isolate intra-VM communication on a single host or allocate important workloads to underutilized hosts to prevent resource contention.
• VM-host anti-affinity rules: These rules maximize workload availability by running applications on separate hosts, reducing the impact of host failures.
• Disable DRS vMotion: Compute policies can be used to prevent workloads from...

Contacting VMware for support assistance

VMware Cloud on AWS is a service provided by VMware, which means that VMware offers direct support and manages the VMware infrastructure. In cases where a Managed Service Provider (MSP) delivers the service, the MSP takes ownership of the customer relationship and provides Tier-1 support. However, VMware remains responsible for managing the AWS infrastructure of VMware Cloud on AWS in both models. This includes continuous monitoring and proactive alerting by the VMware site reliability engineering (SRE) team. The VMware SRE team is tasked with maintaining the infrastructure stack, which involves upgrades and life cycle management of every SDDC deployed on the platform.

For backend support, the VMware SRE team handles all production problems to ensure the availability of the service. However, customers cannot directly access the VMware SRE team. Instead, any VMware Cloud on AWS issues can be addressed through the dedicated support group in...

Summary

In this chapter, we have covered various aspects of capacity management, including adding hosts and clusters, managing vSphere with restricted permissions, and configuring compute and VM Storage Policies. We also discussed the Elastic DRS policy for scaling out and scaling in. Additionally, we explored how to engage with VMware Cloud on AWS support and understand the maintenance and upgrade process in a managed environment.

In the next chapter, we will delve into the intriguing subject of NSX networking and security configurations.