Posted by Slow and steady. That’s how I would describe the pace and progress around making SDDC.Lab version 6 the new default and recommended version of the project.
If you’re not familiar with the SDDC.Lab project, it’s a collection of Ansible Playbooks that perform fully automated deployments of nested VMware Software Defined Data Center environments called pods. Each pod consists of solutions like vSphere, vSAN, NSX, Tanzu, NSX Advanced Load Balancer, Aria Operations for Logs, and VyOS Router.
What’s New?
Product Versions
As always a wide range of product versions can be deployed using the SDDC.Lab scripts. The latest versions that we tested are:
- vCenter Server version 8 Update 2
- ESXi version 8 Update 2
- NSX version 4.1.2.1
- vSphere with Tanzu version 8 Update 2
- Aria Operations for Logs version 8.14.1
- NSX Advanced Load Balancer version 30.1.1
- VyOS Latest Rolling Nightly Build
- Ubuntu Server 22.04 (for ISC BIND)
New Features and Improvements
Luis and I, recommend that you have a look at the project’s CHANGELOG.md for a detailed list of all the new features and improvements that were added in version 6. The list below highlights some of the main new features and improvements:
- Automated deployment of NSX Advanced Load Balancer including configuration of the NSX integration (NSX-T Cloud)
- BFD is configured and enabled by default between the NSX Tier-0 Gateway and the VyOS router
- Developed SDDC.Lab credentials file for Firefox to automate logins to the different management UIs.
- Improved VyOS Router deployment process (thanks rexit1982)
- Improved DNS Server deployment process
- Added additional checks that validate prerequisites for successful SDDC.Lab pod deployments before launching a deployment
- Corrected an issue with the BGP peering between the VyOS router and the physical L3 switch
Besides this we’ve worked on many smaller items like code optimization that improve stability and performance of SDDC.Lab pod deployments.
How to Get Started?
Getting started with SDDC.Lab v6 is quite easy. You simply head over to the GitHub repository and read through the README.md which contains all the information you need to successfully deploy your SDDC.Lab pods.
Summary
SDDC.Lab version 6 is the most stable and mature release in the history of the project. It comes with some good improvements and new features and we really hope you will appreciate it.
We have plans and ideas for the next release and a new development branch for SDDC.Lab is in place already. Check it out if you want to follow what’s coming next in the project.
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