Bare Metal Orchestrator supports the deployment of VMware Telco Cloud Platform (TCP) 2.0.
VMware TCP is a cloud-native platform that enables CSPs to rapidly deploy and efficiently operate multi-vendor CNFs and VNFs, with agility and scalability across 5G networks that span from the core and the edge to the radio access network (RAN). The two fundamental elements of this architecture are VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure, and the VMware Telco Cloud Automation (TCA) tool, which is the installer used for VMware TCP stack deployment.
VMware TCP stack deployment supports four types of deployment models, also known as domains.
Domain type | Minimum number of servers required |
Central Site | 4 |
Regional Site | 4 |
Compute Cluster | 3 |
Cell Site Group | 1 |
Domain type | Minimum number of servers required |
Central Site | 4 |
Central Site Management Domain | 4 |
Central Site Workload Domain | 3 |
These deployment models and their configurations need to be provided to Bare Metal Orchestrator before the VMware TCP stack can be deployed.
Prerequisites
The following prerequisites have to be met before you can deploy VMware TCP stack with Bare Metal Orchestrator:
- Install ESXi 7.0 update 1 on all servers on which the stack will be deployed. All servers should be of the same model type and have the same hardware. For more information about installing the operating system, see Operating system deployment.
- Ensure that the servers are decommissioned before using for stack deployment. See Decommission servers.
- Buy and install licenses for all components in the VMware software bundle that is used to deploy, monitor, and manage the VMware TCP stack. The bundle has the following components:
- VMware ESXi
- VMware vCenter Server
- VMware NSX-T
- VMware vSAN
- VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
- VMware Telco Cloud Automation
- VMware Telco Cloud Automation-Control Plane
- VMware vRealize Orchestrator
- VMware vRealize Log Insight
- Deploy the following:
- DNS server—Provide the details in the TCPConfig.json file (see Creating the configuration files)
- NTP server—Provide the details in the TCPConfig.json file (see Creating the configuration files)
Stack deployment workflow
The following are the high-level steps for using VMware TCP with Bare Metal Orchestrator:
- Add the servers on which the stack is to be deployed to Bare Metal Orchestrator — see Create a server or multiple servers and update configurations. Use the sample esxi-install.yaml file located at ~/samples/stacks and update it with the required details (IP address, username, password, VLAN, operating system install volume, and network information).
- Use Bare Metal Orchestrator CLI to prepare your hardware with the necessary BMC and BIOS configurations.
- Edit the sample configuration files provided and upload them to the web server — see Creating the configuration files.
- Create and apply a stack profile YAML file using Bare Metal Orchestrator CLI.
- Monitor the deployment progress in Bare Metal Orchestrator CLI.
- Deploy Cell Sites and Regional Sites in the VMware TCP stack domain — see Grow a stack (new domain) and Grow a stack (existing domain).
- Operating system install or operating system upgrade
- BIOS operations
- Decommissioning
- IPv4 settings
- RAID operations
- Power operations