This section provides information about the VMware vCenter Server requirements for deploying the SMI Cluster Manager.

The VMware vCenter Server requirements for deploying the SMI Cluster Manager includes:

• VMware vCenter Server.

  The following version of VMware vCenter is supported:

  • VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.5 and later versions. The VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.5 and 6.7 has been fully tested and meets performance benchmarks.

  • The VMware vCenter Server must be ready for deploying the VMs. The setup must include:

    • Creating the Datacenter, Cluster, and Host(s).

    • Setting up the Datastore on the Solid State Drive (SSD).

      Note	Deploying on the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) datastores is the best effort support. It can lead to timeouts and slow performance.

    • Network setup configuration:

      • The SMI Cluster Manager requires at least one static IPv4 address. The IPv4 address must be routable from the machine on which the Docker is being run.

      • Authentication to the VMware vCenter Server.

      • Administrative access to the VMware vCenter Server (user name and password).

        Note	It is possible to setup a limited permission user to perform the deploy operations. Due to the complexity involved in troubleshooting permissions issues in ESXi, only best effort support is provided for non-administrative users.

  • A valid IPv4 address for the ESXi host.

    Note	The default Docker installation does not enable IPv6, which is the cause of this limitation. This limitation will be addressed in a future release.

• The Docker software package.

  Note	To install docker on your laptop or an existing virtual machine (VM), see Docker software package in Prerequisites section.

  The Docker must have network access to:

  • The VMware vCenter Server.

  • The deployed SMI Cluster IP address. An SSH connection is used to configure the SMI Cluster Manager after booting it in the vCenter.

• The SMI Deployer artifacts.

  • For information on downloading the artifacts, see Prerequisites section.

The following are the prerequisites for deploying SMI Cluster Manager on a VMware environment:

• The airgap vmdk release.

  Note	The vmdk file (with the file name cluster-manager.vmdk) is downloaded to the root/cluster-manager-docker-deployer/example-work-directory folder.

• The Docker Deployer image release.

  Example:

  docker pull 
  <docker_deployer_image_directory>

• The Docker software package (required for running the Docker Deployer image) for installing it on your laptop or an existing VM.

  • For installing Docker on MAC OS, see https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/install/

  • For installing Docker on Windows, see https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/

  • For installing Docker on Ubuntu, see https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/

  • For installing Docker on CentOS, see https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/centos/

• The product release tarball. For instance, the latest version of CEE product release tarball.

  Note	You have to place the downloaded tarball in the offline-products subdirectory.

• deploy.yaml (configuration file) – The deploy.yaml file contains the configuration required to bring up the SMI Cluster Manager. Also, the information that is related to K8s cluster (managed by the SMI Cluster Manager) first boot configuration resides in the deploy.yaml file.

This feature is supported on all the Docker Deployer images and SMI Cluster Manager releases. You need to create the following directory and subdirectories for loading the Docker Deployer images on to the Cluster Manager:

• A working directory as shown below:

  [cloud-user@master-01 cluster-manager-docker-deployer]# ls -altr example-work-directory/ 
  total 550752 
  drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 24 Jun 26 23:53 docker-images 
  drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 23 Aug 29 20:38 offline-products 
  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14283 Sep 8 17:32 deploy.yaml 
  drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 99 Sep 9 07:07 . 
  drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Sep 10 18:18 .. 
  

  Important

  The working directory comprises of the following: docker-images (subdirectory) - The Docker image tarballs that are needed for loading onto the Deployer, if any, resides in this subdirectory. The Docker Deployer helper (customization) image tarballs from the network function (SMF or PCF) teams, if any, can also reside in this subdirectory. offline-products (subdirectory) - The product release tarballs that must exist in the local registries, if any, reside in this subdirectory.

The Docker Deployer image for deploying the SMI Cluster Manager.

The subsequent section describe the procedures involved in deploying the SMI Cluster Manager on VMware vCenter.