VMware VVD and External PSC deprecation

[jeffj2000]

I am confused somewhat. We are running NSX-V in an multi-site active/active design with vSphere v6.5. We want to move to v6.7 but as you know the external PSC is becoming deprecated, yet the VVD still has the External PSC as a "requirement". Can someone clarify and explain VMware position on this?

[Sreec]

Yes, External PSC is deprecated. You may please refer below links to know more about it.

VMware Knowledge Base

External Platform Services Controller, A Thing of the Past - VMware vSphere Blog 

[mauricioamorim]

I didn't see this explicitly as a requirement, just an option. Since it is becoming deprecated, I would not use external PSC.

[Nick_Andreev]

Hi Jeffery Hawks,

Could you clarify if you're running VVD:

1. If yes - which version are you running and which version are you moving to?

2. If not - when you say it's a requirement in VVD, which version of VVD are you referring to?

[jeffj2000]

I do not remember which version we are running, we are still running v6.3.5 with an upgrade to v6.4.5 in 2 months planned. But even when I looked at the latest VVD it seemed it wanted external PSC which was odd.

I am also not looking forward to collapsing to Embedded. Seems a chore.

[Nick_Andreev]

So, a couple of things:

1. If you are on NSX 6.3.5, you are most likely using VVD 4.1. You can find BoM for VVD 4.1 here: VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.1 Release Notes
2. If you are upgrading to NSX 6.4.5, you are most likely moving to the latest VVD 5.1. Here is the 5.1 BoM: VMware Validated Design 5.1 Release Notes
3. So you're jumping between five different versions 4.1 > 4.2 > 4.3 > 5.0 > 5.1. Since VVD documentation provides procedures for upgrades to the next version only (e.g. 4.1 to 4.2 or 4.2 to 4.3) you won't be able to use VVD Upgrade Guide to perform an upgrade. It will have to be a custom upgrade plan. Make sure to check compatibility between all versions on each upgrade step, supported upgrade path, as well as any known issues in product release notes.

More specifically around your PSC question. As you may know, VVD uses ring topology when configuring PSCs to achieve higher availability. In the current design there is a static number of PSCs (two per site), which are configured during deployment and topology doesn't change.

When using embedded PSCs, each time customer adds another vCenter (a workload domain for another customer, in case of a service provider, or a test/dev workload domain) PSC topology has to change, which introduces additional complexity.

There are plans to change that, so stay tuned.