VCF 4.5 - Management of vSAN Witness Appliance and Appliances Physical ESXi Host

[MJMVCIX]

Hi All, 

i have reviewed the VCF documents to try and locate the detail around managing the VCF vSAN Witness Appliance to see if its supported or not: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/index.html however cannot locate the detail.

• We are planning to deploy 1 Stretched Management Workload domain which will have its own vSAN Witness Appliance in a 3rd location hosted on a standalone ESXi Host. 
• We are planning to deploy 1 Stretched VI Workload domain which will have its own vSAN Witness Appliance in a 3rd location hosted on a standalone ESXi Host. 

1. Can the Management WLD vCenter manage the vSAN Witness Appliance? So can i right click the Management WLD Datacenter and select Add Host, then add the vSAN Witness Appliance which will then appear as a blue ESXi Host?
2. Can the Management WLD vCenter manage the vSAN Witness Appliance's Physical standalone ESXi Host? So can i right click the Management WLD Datacenter and select Add Host, then add the vSAN Witness Appliance's Physical Standalone Host?
   • I believe the answer is no to this one, in that the VCF vCenters cannot manage other hosts outside of the WLD.
3. The same questions above apply to the VI WLD.

If the above are not possible, then how are you managing the vSAN Witness Appliances and the Physical ESXi host that the appliance runs on? 

Thanks, 

[CyberNils]

1. Yes, it is documented here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/4.5/vcf-admin/GUID-CB6227AB-1D38-4822-B8D9-34F97F...

2. No.

3. Same with VI WLD as Management WLD.

[CyberNils]

The Physical ESXi host that the appliance runs on must be managed by a different vCenter than the ones deployed by VCF. The vSAN Witness should be running completely independent from the cluster it is being a witness for, including all networking.