Begin by logging onto the IBM Cloud.

1. ClickLog in
2. Enter the Email address johnsonryan@vmware.com and clickContinue.
3. Enter the password and click Log in.
4. Click the scroll bar twice to scroll down.  You will see the “VMware optimized for the cloud” offering.
5. Click VMware optimized for the cloud

At the IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions page you see there are currently two VMware solutions available from IBM Cloud  the Cloud Foundation Solution and a vCenter Server Solution.

1. Click the scroll bar to scroll down.  Here we can read about both solutions.  
2. Click the scroll bar to scroll down.  Here we see information about how to order.
3. Click the scroll bar to scroll down.  Here we are able to view additional information about these solutions.
4. Click the scroll bar to scroll back to the top.

We will now proceed with deploying the VMware Cloud Foundation solution on the IBM Cloud.  Remember, this solution includes the full SDDC foundation stack to include vSphere, vSAN, and NSX.

1. Under Cloud Foundation click Learn More

We’re provided with a description of the solution along with a list of the technical specifications.

1. Click the scroll bar twice to scroll down to the bottom of the page, taking a moment to note the technical specifications as you scroll.
2. Click Settings in the left navigation pane

Here we can configure the notification settings within IBM Cloud.  We can choose whether to enable or disable both email and console notification.

1. Click the scroll bar to scroll down.

We can also setup an IBM Cloud API Key.  The API key allows us to navigate the IBM Cloud portal securely without having to continue to provide a username and password.  Let’s copy in our API key.

1. Click inside the box labeled “Paste SoftLayer Key here” to paste the API key.
2. Click Save Credentials
3. Click OK to confirm the credential was saved successfully

We’re now ready to proceed with ordering out Cloud Foundation solution.

1. Click Order Instance from the left navigation pane
2. Click the scroll bar to scroll down
3. Click Order Instance under Cloud Foundation
4. Click Verifying your SoftLayer API Key…

We begin by specifying if Cloud Foundation should be deployed in the Primary or Secondary site.  As this is our first deployment of Cloud Foundation we’ll choose Primary.

1. Click Primary

Each Cloud Foundation instance requires a unique domain name and instance name.  In addition, we can specify the type of hardware and a data center location.  Notice that as we input the values, the graphic on the right is automatically updated based on our settings.

1. Enter bluemix.vmware.com for the Domain Name
2. Enter sjc01 for the Instance Name
3. Click the dropdown under Hardware

We see two options, a small option which consists of 24 cores, 128 GB of RAM and 12 disks and a standard option which consist of 28 cores, 256 GB RAM and 12 disks.  

1. Click the Standard option
2. Click the dropdown under Data Center Location
3. Select SJC03  San Jose for the data center
4. Click the scroll bar to scroll down
5. Click Next

IBM Cloud will now validate the settings to make sure they are valid and that there are no conflicts.

1. Click the Checking domain name… box to close the pop-up

IBM offers additional services that can optionally be deployed along with the Cloud Foundation solution.  Here we are being asked if we would like to deploy the Zerto 5.0 disaster recovery solution.  This would enable us to replicate virtual machines between data centers.  In this simulation, we will not deploy the Zerto 5.0 disaster recovery solution.

1. Click Continue

IBM cloud will now calculate the price of our order.  

1. Click the Calculating the price of your order… box to close the pop-up

Review the System information and estimated costs.  When ready to begin the deployment, place the order.

1. Click Place Order

That’s it, we’ve initiated the deployment of our Cloud Foundation environment on the IBM Cloud.  IBM now leverages the advanced automation capabilities provided by VMware Cloud Foundation and the SDDC Manger to “bring up” the SDDC software stack on the physical servers running in the San Jose data center.  The includes:

• Assembling the physical switches and vSAN ReadyNodes in the physical racks
• Configuring the switches
• Installing ESXi on the servers
• Deploying the Cloud Foundation SDDC manager
• Deploying the Platform Services Controllers and instantiating the SSO domain
• Deploying the vCenter Server Instance for the Management Workload Domain
• Creating the disk groups and configuring the vSAN datastore
• Configuring the Virtual Distributed Switch and Port Groups
• Deploying and configuring VMware NSX

1. Click Congratulations. Your instance sjc01 is being setup. to close the pop-up

We see the deployed Cloud Foundation instance is now ready to use.  In the simulation this happened very quickly, in reality it will take several hours for the IBM to deploy the solution.

We can now view the environment.

1. Click sjc01

Here we see a summary of the Cloud Foundation instance to include the properties and access information.  Take a minute to review this information.  Note that by default the passwords are masked.  To view the passwords, so we can logon to the vSphere web client for example, we simply click “show passwords”.  

1. Click Show passwords

Note the vCenter Admin user name is administrator@vsphere.local and the password is “1z0!MYh^”.  We’ll use this information to logon to the vSphere Web Client later on in the simulation.

1. Click Show passwords again to toggle the passwords back off
2. Click the scroll bar to scroll down

Notice that we can also view the credentials and IP address information for the ESXi servers.  Also, here we can see that there are currently four ESXi servers configured in our Cloud Foundation instance.  This is the minimum number of hosts required to run Cloud Foundation.

1. Click Show passwords to display the passwords

Notice that each host has a separate password and that IBM uses a robust password complexity.

1. Click Show passwords again to toggle the passwords back off
2. Click the scroll bar to scroll down

Next, we are able to see the deployment history.  We can see here that we initiated the deployment on May 25^th at 2:39pm and that the instance was ready for use that evening at 9:44pm.  While it took several hours to complete the request, it’s pretty impressive when you consider that in just over 8 hours we were able to deploy and configure the full SDDC software stack, to include vSphere, vSAN and NSX in a fully tested and validated architecture.  What’s more, is that this hosted environment is fully compatible with our existing on-premises vSphere deployments.

1. Click the scroll bar to scroll down

We’re now ready to login to the vCenter console.  Notice that IBM provides a reminder of steps that should be performed prior to logging in.  Review the prerequisites.

1. Click vCenter Console

We are connected to the familiar vSphere Web Console.

1. Enter administrator@vsphere.local for the User Name
2. Enter 1z0!MYh^ for the password (this is the password we noted earlier)
3. Click Login

We’ve now left the IBM Cloud Portal and are accessing our new SDDC environment just as we would our on premises environment using the vSphere Web Client.

1. Click the Home Icon
2. Select Host and Clusters

Here we see our vSphere cluster “SDDC-Cluster” with four ESXi hosts.

1. Click host0.sjc01.bluemix.vmware.com

Here we can view the utilization information along with of the hardware specifications and details of the ESXi configuration on the host.

1. Click the Virtual Machines Icon in the left navigation panel

Here we see a list of the virtual machines currently deployed.  As this is a new deployment, we only see the infrastructure VMs as we haven’t yet deployed any compute workloads.  The infrastructure VMs include the following:

• SDDC manager
• Platform Services Controller
• vCenter Server
• NSX Manager
• NSX Controllers
• NSX Edge Services Gateways (ESGs)

1. Click the Storage Icon in the left navigation panel
2. Click vsanDatastore

Here we see the vSAN datastore for the cluster.  Notice that all the virtual machines are running on this datastore.  Cloud Foundation is a hyper-converged solution built on top of vSAN.  Whether you are running it on premises or from a public cloud, you are able to fully benefit from the robust performance and scalability provided by vSAN.

1. Click the Summary tab

Here we can see details about the vSAN datastore.  Notice how little space is being consumed by the infrastructure components.

1. Click the Network Icon in the left navigation panel

Here we can view the details of the Virtual Distributed Switches that have been deployed and the port groups that have automatically been configured.  Take some time to review the different switches and port groups.

1. Click the Home Icon
2. Click Home

This concludes our interactive simulation on deploying Cloud Foundation on the IBM Cloud.

To return to the lab, click the link in the top right corner or close this browser tab.