VMware Validated Design – Automated Deployment with Cloud Builder – Part 1: Overview

This is the first in a series of posts on VMware Cloud Builder – The automated deployment engine for VMware Validated Design – which delivers consistent and repeatable Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) deployments across your regions. Hopefully you will find it useful!

• VMware Validated Design – Automated Deployment with Cloud Builder – Part 1: Overview
• VMware Validated Design – Automated Deployment with Cloud Builder – Part 2: Environment Prerequisites
• VMware Validated Design – Automated Deployment with Cloudbuilder – Part 3: Deployment Parameters File
• VMware Validated Design – Automated Deployment with Cloud Builder – Part 4: Generating SSL Certificates
• VMware Validated Design – Automated Deployment with Cloud Builder – Part 5: Cloud Builder Deployment & Environment Validation
• VMware Validated Design – Automated Deployment with Cloud Builder – Part 6: Deploy The SDDC

VMware Validated Design 5.0 is the first release to come with publicly available automated deployment capabilities in the form of Cloud Builder. Cloud Builder is a virtual appliance containing all of the automation workflows necessary to deploy a VVD based SDDC for either single or dual regions (including disaster recovery with SRM). Along with the appliance comes an ISO containing all of the required binaries. The following binaries are included:

• VMware ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware NSX for vSphere
• VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager
• VMware vRealize Automation
• VMware vRealize Business for Cloud
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager
• Management Packs for vRealize Operations Manager
• VMware vRealize Log Insight
• Content Packs for vRealize Log Insight
• VMware Site Recovery Manager
• VMware vSphere Replication

While internally in VMware there have been deployment automation tools, they were not publicly available so up until now if you wished to deploy a VMware Validated Design release you needed to follow the extensive manual guidance in the region specific deployment guides. Those guides were around 400 pages. As Cloud Builder is now doing the majority of the work for you those guides are now down to around 80 pages (mostly consisting of pre req work that you need to complete prior to running Cloud Builder). So you can quickly see the benefits of something like Cloud Builder.

Disclaimer: Cloud Builder is designed to adhere to all of the Design Decisions of the VMware Validated Design so if you are not looking to deploy a VMware Validated Design based SDDC this deployment automation tool is not for you! If you are then hopefully you will find this series of posts useful.  

More information on VMware Validated Design can be found in the official documentation area here