vRA\vRO 7.x - NSX-T portgroups selection

[Czernobog]

Can someone tell, when the NSX-T portgroup support is coming? In 7.5?

I know the compatibility is not there yet. Currently vRA seems to be able to see the port groups, you can for example assign them to a network profile in a reservation. However during deployment, instead of connecting the VM to the port group, a new vSwitch port group is created, attached to the VM but not connected. A manual workaround is to connect them to the correct overlay network. When this is done, the vSwitch pg is automatically removed.

I am looking for a way to achieve my goal by using a day-2 operation executed by vRO, but vRO does not seem to recognize the NSX-T port groups by default, except if a VM, deployed by vRA, is deployed. So by default no NSX-T pg's are discovered by the vCenter plugin. After a VM has been deployed by vRA, the port group is discovered. If I reconfigure the VM, so that the NIC is connected to the correct overlay network, the vSwitch pg disappears and also the overlay network is no longer visible in the vRO vCenter plugin. My workaround for this issue is to deploy a "dummy" vm using vRA, and assign a NIC for each network profile that includes an NSX-T overlay network. That way I should be able to assign the networks automatically using vRO, since they are now visible in the vCenter plugin.

edit: a workaround was made available using PowerCLI - Set-NetworkAdapter does not support attaching VMs to | VMware PowerCLI

[rstoker13 · Accepted solution]

Per the vRA 7.5 announcements, it appears that NSX-T support is indeed included. However, we had an immediate need to deploy machines to NSX-T logical switches in vRA 7.3. I duplicated and modified a native action to function with NSX-T opaque networks instead of distributed port groups. I was then able to create a workflow using this action and present it through the EventBroker on the PRE of CloneWorkflow.CustomizeMachine. This workflow gathers the name of the logical switch and assigns it to the VM being deployed. This occurs prior to the VM being powered on. We have tested several times and have not run into issues as of yet. I am attaching a package to this post in hopes that others may find it useful.

Please let me know if you have questions or issues. Thanks.

[Czernobog]

Thanks! I put my task on hold in wait for 7.5, since native NSX-T support should remediate the issue. If not, I will try your workaround.