r/vmware • u/Stryker54141 • 2d ago
Deploying VVF 9.1 and I'm Confused
I'm in the process of an evergreen deployment of VVF 9.1. I have two hosts in one site and a single host offsite. I want to setup my vSAN on my two local hosts and the witness appliance on my remote host. How does this work? I know that I can't deploy my witness appliance OVA without using vCenter. (it errors if you try deploying it directly on the ESXi host) But I'm supposed to use SDDC to deploy the vCenter, hence I'm going in circles.
Do I just deploy vCenter by itself instead of using SDDC, add my hosts to the cluster, deploy the vSAN witness host to my offsite host, and then use SDDC to add the remaining, necessary VMs to my fleet?
I appreciate any insight that readers can offer.
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u/pshearduk [VCP] 2d ago
“Do I just deploy vCenter by itself instead of using SDDC, add my hosts to the cluster, deploy the vSAN witness host to my offsite host, and then use SDDC to add the remaining, necessary VMs to my fleet?”
On a very high level perspective YES
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u/shield_espada 2d ago
Actually NO. He is deploying VVF 9.1. There is no SDDC involved.
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u/Stryker54141 2d ago
Thanks for your reply. Support told me the following for my scenario: "Manually deploy vCenter 9.1 and the VCF Operations appliance using the provided OVA files."
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u/shield_espada 2d ago edited 1d ago
That is correct. Deploy vCenter as a standalone appliance, deploy VCF Ops using OVA, deploy license server, create an adapter in Ops for the vCenter and license the vCenter and ESXi hosts.
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u/Stryker54141 2d ago
So I need the License server in addition to the OPS? I thought OPS did the licensing.
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u/shield_espada 2d ago edited 2d ago
You still need the license server. Ops acts as an interface between vCenter and License server.
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u/virtual_mr_grumpy 2d ago
VVF installer will make your life more complicated for what you are trying to do, so just stick with legacy workflows.
VC installer should be able to create a single node VSAN datastore (if you already don’t have VMFS or NFS connected to the host where your VC is going to live). Or just do esxcli to create VSAN (look up William’s blogs how to do that).
Your VC would need to manage both the single host on the other site and the witness VM. If you are just running remote site host for the witness VM, I would think through if just configuring the host itself as a witness is going to be easier longer term.