In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 there are two options to deploy VCF Automation (VCFA) 9. The first is through the VCF Installer, the second is through Fleet Management in VCF Operations.

In this blog post, I’ll demonstrate how to deploy VCFA 9 as day-n action through VCF Fleet Management.

In VCF 9, VCF Operations provides a comprehensive set of tools for managing the lifecycle of both VCF management components and VCF core components. We can use VCF Operations to download and manage upgrade, patch, and install binaries. Plus we can also manage ESX components and vSphere Lifecycle Manager images and deploy optional VCF management components.

Note: VCF components are classified based on the level at which they operate. VCF Management components operate on the fleet level, while VCF core components operate on the instance level. VCFA is a Management component.

Depot Configuration and Binary Management

Before we can deploy (or upgrade or patch) a VCF management component, we must download the required binaries to the VCF Operations fleet management appliance. The method that we use depends on we you access the internet in your environment. We can choose between online and offline depot. In our lab environment the VCF Operations fleet management appliance connects directly to the online depot and requires a download token.

In VCF Operations, select Fleet Management > Lifecycle > VCF Management > Depot Configuration. On the Online Depot tile, click Configure.

In the Configure Online Depot form provide the Download Token and accept the imported certificate. Then click Ok.

After the connection to the online depot is established, the Online Depot tile appears with an active depot connection and the binaries to download appear on the Binary Management tab.

Now, we download the install binaries for VCF Automation from Binary Management.

To do so, we navigate to Fleet Management > Lifecycle > Binary Management and select the binary type Install Binaries. There, we select the automation binary an click on Download.

Once the automation binary has been downloaded successfully, the Download Status changes from Not Downloaded to Downloaded.

Install the VCFA product component

Now we can start the installation procedure of a new VCF Automation instance.

On the Overview tab under Fleet Management > Lifecycle, we click Add on the tile for VCF Automation.

We choose New Install as Installation Type, select the appropriate Version, and select the Deployment Type, e.g. Small. Then click Next.

Select the SSL certificate and click Next.

To generate a new certificate click the + sign and provide the details, e.g.:

Now we enter the Infrastructure properties and click Next. For vCenter, select the Management Domain vCenter.

Next, we enter the Network properties and click Next.

On the Components page, we first enter the component properties. These are the FQDN of the component (note this is the VCFA VIP FQDN, not the FQDN of the first VCFA node!), the Certificate, and the Component Password. We can create the password by clicking on Add Password.

For the Cluster Virtual IP, we enter the FQDN, and select the Controller Type as Internal Load Balancer.

For the Components, we provide the details of the VCFA primary node, i.e. Node Prefix, Primary VIP, Internal Cluster CIDR. As we are using the internal load balancer, the Primary VIP Address should resolve to the component FQDN. In our lab this is 10.230.20.30 (not the IP address of the primary node, which would be 10.230.20.31 in our lab).

We skip Additional VIPs and enter the Cluster Node IP Pool. The Node IP Pool is a range of IP addresses allocated to cluster nodes. For a small deployment, 2 IP addresses are required (for a HA deployment 4 IP addresses are required). Then we click Next.

On the Precheck page we click Run Precheck. If all validations passed for this environment, we click Next.

Finally, we click Submit.

This triggers the deployment of VCFA. We can monitor the progress by navigating to Lifecycle > VCF Management > Tasks.