The VMware Cloud Foundation Builder VM provides VMware Cloud Foundation staging, imaging, configuration, and deployment services. It is responsible for the entire SDDC bring-up process. Installation of this component is the first of a multistep bring-up process for VMware Cloud Foundation.
Although VMware Cloud Foundation Builder includes VIA, we do not use it because we have installed ESXi remotely through the iDRAC.
VMware Cloud Foundation Builder does require a host outside of the Ready Stack environment to perform the VMware Cloud Foundation bring-up process. You can perform the process on a laptop running VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion, or on an ESXi host. The VMware Cloud Foundation Builder VM must have network access to all hosts on the management network. Deployment of the VMware Cloud Foundation Builder VM requires approximately 350 GB of storage.
For this deployment guide, we installed VMware Cloud Foundation Builder on a PowerEdge R640 server that was connected to S5248F-ON switches and running ESXi 6.7.
To install the VMware Cloud Foundation Builder VM:
You must have an authorized VMware account to access the download file.
Do not change the Default Deployment Architecture (vcf).
Note: DNS configuration errors are one of the leading causes of VMware Cloud Foundation deployment failures.