The VCF Management WLD cluster requires a minimum of four hosts on which the infrastructure components used to instantiate and manage the private cloud infrastructure run. For VCF on VxRail, the Management WLD cannot be used to host business workloads but other management workloads can be deployed as long as the cluster has been sized accordingly. This Management WLD is created during initial system install (or bring-up) using the VCF Cloud Builder tool.

In the Management WLD cluster, vSphere runs with a dedicated vCenter server that is backed by vSAN storage. It hosts the SDDC Manager, VxRail Manager VMs, and NSX-T Managers. vRealize Log Insight for Management domain logging and vRealize Operations and vRealize Automation are optional and must be manually deployed following VVD guidance. The management cluster must have a minimum of four hosts to provide vSAN FTT=1 during maintenance operations.

While the deployment and configuration of the management cluster is fully automated, once it is running, you manage it just like you would any other VxRail cluster using the vSphere HTML5 client.

Figure 2.              Management Domain Components

The management domain vCenter is deployed using the standard VxRail cluster deployment process using internal VCSA deployment. This vCenter is then configured as an external vCenter using the vCenter UI. This conversion is performed for two reasons:

• It establishes a common identity management system that can be linked between vCenters.
• It allows the SDDC Manager LCM process to life cycle all vCenter components in the solution.

Figure 3.              vCenter Design