VMware Workstation Gen 9: Part 1 – Goals, Requirements, and a bit of planning
It’s time to build my VMware Workstation–based home lab with VCF 9. In a recent blog post, I documented my upgrade journey from VMware Workstation 17 to 25H2. In this installment, we’ll go deeper into the goals, requirements, and overall planning for this new environment. As you read through this series, you may notice that I refer to VCF 9.0.1 simply as VCF 9 or VCF for brevity.
Important Notes:
- VMware Workstation Gen 9 series is still a work in progress. Some aspects of the design and deployment may change as the lab evolves, so readers should consider this a living build. I recommend waiting until the series is complete before attempting to replicate the environment in your own lab.
- There are some parts in this series where I am unable to assist users. In lieu I provide resources and advice to help users through this phase. These areas are VCF Offline Depot and Licensing your environment. As a Broadcom/VMware employee, we are not granted the same access as users. I have an internal process to access resources and these processes would not be helpful to users.
Overall Goals
- Build a nested minimal VCF 9.0.1 environment based on VMware Workstation 25H2 running on Windows 11 Pro.
- Both Workload and Management Domains will run on the same set of nested ESX Hosts.
- Using the VCF Installer I’ll initially deploy the VCF 9 Management Domain Components as a Simple Model.
- Initial components include: VCSA, VCF Operations, VCF Collector, NSX Manager, Fleet Manager, and SDDC Manager all running on the 3 x Nested ESX Hosts.
- Workstation Nested VMs are:
- 3 x ESX 9.0.1 Hosts
- 1 x VCF Installer
- 1 x VCF Offline Depot Appliance
- 1 x Windows 2022 Server (Core Services)
- Core Services supplied via Windows Server: AD, DNS, NTP, RAS, and DHCP.
- Networking: Private to Workstation, support VLANs, and support MTU of 9000. Routing and internet access supplied by the Windows Server VM.
- Should be able to run minimal workload VM’s on nested ESX Hosts.
Hardware BOM
If you are interested in the hardware I’m running to create this environment please see my Build of Materials (BOM) page.
Deployment Items
To deploy the Simple model I’ll need to make sure I have my ESX 9 Hosts configured properly. With a simple deployment we’ll deploy 7 required appliances running on the Nested ESX hosts. Additionally, on Workstation we’ll be running the AD server, VCF Offline Depot tool, and the VCF Installer appliance.
Using the chart below I can get an idea of how many cores, ram, and disk that will be needed. The one item that stands out to me is the component with the highest core count. In this case it’s VCF Automation at 24 cores. This is important as I’ll need to make sure my nested ESX Servers match or exceed 24 cores. If not, VCF Automation will not be able to deploy. Additionally, I’ll need to make sure I have enough RAM, Disk, and space for Workload VM’s.
Workstation Items
My overall plan is to build out a Windows Server, 3 x ESX 9 hosts, VCF Installer, and the VCF Depot Appliance. Each one of these will be deployed directly onto Workstation. Once the VCF Installer is deployed it will take care of deploying and setting up the necessary VMs.
Network Layout
One of the main network requirements for VCF is supporting VLAN networks. My Gen8 Workstation deployment did not use VLAN networks. Workstation can pass tagged VLAN packets via LAN Segments. The configuration of LAN Segments is done at the VM’s Workstation settings, not via the Virtual Network Editor.
In the next part of this series I’ll show how I used Workstation Templates to create my VMs and align them to the underlying hardware.
Resources:
vmexplorer 