Advice for starting vCenter & vSphere deployment

[javelinco]

Okay, so here's my question, and it's a long one, maybe.

I plan to deploy vSphere/vCenter deployment soon, and I'm currently planning to have an isolated network for the management stuff. My understanding is that to make that happen, you have the ESXi hosts setup a NIC that is connected to an isolated switch, and then assign IPs in the same subnet to each machine. So, that's what I'd like to do. NICs will be connected to a seperate switch for the vMotion, and for the VMs on the hosts.

This leaves me with a minor quandry, however. I'd like to get vCenter setup on a VM. And vCenter needs to be able to contact the domain controllers for the domain, right? What I'd like to do is setup vCenter, setup the distributed vSwitches and hook them up to the NICs that are connected to the internal network (and thus the domain controllers), and make sure everything is working properly. Once that is complete, I'd like to bring up a couple of VMs that will take over the duties of the domain controllers, and go from there, virtualizing the majority of the servers on the network. Yahoo!

So, here's the problem, as far as I can tell. If I want the management network of the ESXi hosts to be isolated, with their own IPs, then how is the vCenter VM supposed to contact the inside network where the domain controllers are, since I won't have any vSwitches setup to the other NICs, 'cause I need vCenter to create those vSwitches, etc. Chicken and the egg? I'm sure someone has dealt with, and solved this problem before. Help?

[ieuuk1987]

Hi There,

Sorry if i've misunderstood the question but I think what you're going to end up with is 2 networks... one for intercommunications between the ESX hosts (VMotion + FT) and then one out to the public network and then with your virtual center VM you can set it to be part of the public network.

Thanks,

Ian

[javelinco]

That is correct. We'll have an internal, management only network between the ESXi hosts, and another network the VMs are working on. The question is how to get that setup, since the VMs won't have access to the VM network until vCenter is setup, and I can't setup vCenter without access to the VM network (which is where the domain controllers are).

Help?

[rstierna]

i started looking at doing this awhile back and ended up settling on a private network that is still routable. Originally, we tried to set up a private non-routable secure network for the hosts and VI Center connectivity but kept running into issues. The Vi Center was easy. Configure it with two virtual NIC's one connected to the secure SC network with the hosts and one on the vSwitch that had connectivity to the domain. Then we needed to setup a DNS server VM the same way for our hosts to privide DNS lookups. Then we ran accross an issue that our hosts needed to contact our DC that provides our time service. At that point, we settled on a private subnet that only has ESX hosts connected along with the VI Center. The VI Center VM had a NIC assigned to the Service Console vSwitch and to the VM network vSwitch.

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[rstierna]

i may have missed part of your question. To initially configure or setup the VI Center VM you may need to use the VI client to log directly into the host it is running on. Then you can modify what virtual switches the VM has access to.

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[javelinco]

So, it sounds to me like the best way to do this is to have the management network on its own subnet, but make sure it can get get a route to the domain controllers on the VM subnet. Is that what you are saying?

[rstierna · Accepted solution]

Yes, that is what we did for the SC for VI center and each host. We use a non-routable subnet for our Vmotion network.

sorry, i havn't been back in the community forum since i responded.

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