Guest virtual machines cannot be deployed in the Cloud Foundation management workload domain. This domain is reserved for management purposes only, and only virtual machines needed to administer the cloud platform are deployed in this domain. At initial deployment of Cloud Foundation on VxRail, after the first VxRail cluster is built, Dell Technologies will deploy a temporary virtual appliance named ‘Cloud Foundation Cloud Builder’ on the cluster. This tool, when activated, layers the Cloud Foundation management workload domain on the VxRail cluster, and in the same process, deploys an initial core set of virtual machines to support overall Cloud Foundation on VxRail management.

This initial set of core virtual machines from Cloud Builder provides a baseline on the minimum resources needed to bring up the management workload domain and begin deploying VI workload domains. However, for each VI workload domain that is created, a base of management virtual machines is deployed by SDDC Manager and placed in the management workload domain and in the VI workload domain. Therefore, in order to get more accurate sizing guidelines for the management workload domain, the planned use cases for the VI workload domains must be understood, and a resource consumption assessment completed for the VI workload domains, before determining the required size of the management workload domain.

If VMware vRealize functionality is part of the overall plan, then additional resources need to be reserved for those virtual machines. The tables in the Cloud Foundation on VxRail Footprints for Sizing appendix can be used to provide estimates of the minimum sizing requirements for the management components, based on planned use cases.