Creating a Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain
Workload domains are logical units that are used to carve up the VxRack’s hardware resources. There are two types of workload domains that are pre-packaged in the environment :
- Virtual Infrastructure workload domain. This consists of a set of esxi hosts / a vCSA / an NSX Manager and 3 NSX controllers. 3 hosts is the minimum configuration and 64 is the maximum. (vSphere maximums)
- VDI workload domain (addressed in a future post)
The bring up of these workload domains is an automated procedure that calls a particular set of workflows based on the options you select. The software automatically calculates the amount of hosts needed to satisfy the capacity requirements you specify using Resources (CPU / MEM / Storage) , performance and availability
To create a VI workload domain, just select Add Workload Domain via SDDC manager and follow the wizard
Once you get to the workload configuration page, you can select the resources / performance and availability you require for the workload domain.
Each performance option determines capacity related settings in the workload domains vSAN storage policy
Each availability option determines the number of drive failures that the workload domains environment can tolerate
Note : Select the “Use all default networks” unless you want to manually set values for the vlan id / subnet / gateway etc
At the end of the wizard you can review the configuration and click finish, or you can go back and change some of the configuration
While the workflows are running, its possible to monitor the progress using the status window
Note : The new workload domain will be part of the same SSO domain as the management domain and will share the PSC’s deployed in the management domain
Once the workload domain has been created , we can see in the following screenshots that the workflows will add the new vCSA to vROPS and Log insight that are located in the Management Domain
Log Insight
vROPS
As the mgmt domain and workload domains share the same set of PSC’s, the vCSA’s are configured to use enhanced link mode and its possible to see both vCSA’s when you log into either virtual center. Both vCSA’s are accessed using the same credentials.
Note : The workload domain VC and NSX manager VM’s live in the management cluster.
If we expand the workload domain virtual center, we can see the newly deployed number of hosts needed to satisfy the performance options selected previously, we can also see the NSX controllers for the workload domain.
Once the workload domain has been successfully created and you have verified the configuration then you are ready to provision VM’s.
In the next post we will look at creating a VDI workload domain…
