Vcf | The Nested Lab

site-f06.yaml feeds gen_lab_blueprint.py, which writes eight blueprints and two property groups; each request builds a lab in its own VPC with a jump host, dc01, four nested hosts, vCenter, VCF Operations and AD, routed by the VPC gateway with no router VM

Nested labs in VCF Automation 9.1, built from code instead of captured

A VCF Automation 9.1 catalog that builds a complete nested VCF lab per request, each in its own VPC. How it differs from capturing a hand-built lab, and what building from code buys you.

Everything that has to cross the airlock: images, signatures, node OVAs, kernel headers, licences

VKS and the GPU Operator in a dark site: the whole airlock

Upgrading VKS, Kubernetes and the NVIDIA GPU Operator with no internet means five supply chains arriving intact. Each has a trap that passes every check until activation. This is the map.

Org Builder's Home page, four ways in, with the Install or upgrade tile highlighted and its note: Install, upgrade or uninstall an organization from packages

Install, upgrade, uninstall: a whole lab catalog with Org Builder

The nested-lab catalog as three Org Builder packages that install, upgrade and uninstall a VCF Automation organization. How made and found keep an uninstall honest, and what two live runs proved.

Org Builder's Home page, four ways in, with the Create a package tile highlighted and its note: Create a package from an organization

Bring your own image: a step done by hand in Org Builder

Org Builder’s second worked example, the bring-your-own-image case: a team catalog that boots from an image, packaged without the image file, edited to ask for each site’s own copy at the right moment, and installed in production. Plus what VCF Automation’s own OVA export does with the same blueprint.

Org Builder's Home page, four ways in, with the Move an organization tile highlighted and its note: Package one organization and install it into another

Same blueprints, different values: dev to prod with Org Builder

Org Builder’s first worked example: two blueprints and the property groups they read, exported from a development organization and imported into production with production’s own values.

Org Builder's Home page: four ways in, each a tile of its own - Make a site file, Create a package, Install or upgrade, and Move an organization - with links below for the offline site wizard, importing a bundle and editing a package, beside the Install and Package and move steps in the side menu

Introducing Org Builder

Why we built Org Builder, our tool for VCF Automation organizations: catalog services built in one organization have to reach others, and rebuilding them by hand or scripting every API call doesn’t scale. Packages, site files and versioned releases, in brief.

The blueprint designer's palette, Supervisor Namespace, VPC and Workload groups, unfolding into five YAML types and the Kubernetes kinds behind each item

Every resource in the VCF Automation 9.1 blueprint designer: the complete guide

A complete guide to the VCF Automation 9.1 blueprint designer: every palette item, the YAML behind it, every field the platform accepts, recipes and traps. Every snippet validated, dry-run or deployed.

Seven demo apps behind seven VIPs on one VCFA-deployed VKS cluster

Seven demo apps, one request: deploying a showcase stack via VCF Automation

Seven demo apps, Pac-Man and KubeDoom among them, on a VKS cluster that VCF Automation built in a tenant VPC, each with its own NSX virtual IP. The proper tenanted path, what you get for free, and the traps.

Pac-Man inside a VPC boundary; a LoadBalancer VIP is the one door out

What's a VPC? Let Pac-Man explain

Part 0 of the Pod Papers: an NSX VPC explained with a running game of Pac-Man. Private by default, one deliberate door out, and a self-inflicted outage where five green layers hid one wrong integer.

The trunk-subnet design: one trunk vNIC, binding maps demux VLANs 1610/1611/1612 into VPC subnets

Nested ESXi inside an NSX VPC: the trunk-subnet design

Plain VPC subnets silently blackhole a nested ESXi host. Why, and the trunk subnet and binding map design that makes nested labs work as an ordinary NSX VPC tenant.