Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution allows you to create and manage VMware enabled software-defined data centers (SDDCs) in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Solution Highlights

An Oracle Cloud VMware Solution gives you full access to the features of a VMware SDDC, along with the following benefits:

  • High availability: All VMware components are distributed across different fault domains within the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region’s availability domains. vSAN converged storage technology replicates data across all of the ESXi hosts in the SDDC.
  • Scalability: You can start with 3 ESXi hosts and scale up to 64 hosts in a single SDDC.
  • Lift and shift: Migration of on-premises VMware workloads to a Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is seamless.
  • Full integration: Because the SDDC resides in a virtual cloud network (VCN), it can be configured to communicate with other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources such as Compute instances, DB systems and Autonomous Databases, and so on.
  • Manageability: The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console provides workflows to facilitate SDDC creation and networking configuration.
  • Layer 2 networking: SDDCs are configured with VLANs, which support applications that need layer 2 networking to run in the public cloud.
Note

Bring your own hypervisor deployment of ESXi on bare metal Compute instances is not supported.

SDDC Details

An Oracle Cloud Infrastructure SDDC base configuration has the following properties:

  • From 3 to 64 ESXi hosts on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure bare metal BM.DenseIO2.52 Compute instances
  • 156 OPCUs, 2304 GB of physical memory, and 153 TB of NVMe-based raw storage
  • A version of VMware software on each ESXi host
  • An subnet and VLANs in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure VCN

Supported Shapes

Currently, the only shape supported for ESXi hosts is a two-socket BM.DenseIO2.52 with two CPUs each running 26 cores. See Dense I/O Shapes for more detail.

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution Architecture

The following diagram shows how the various components of the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC are deployed on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure bare metal Compute instances, and how the solution is integrated into the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment.

Diagram showing the architecture of the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution

The diagram shows three ESXi hosts of an SDDC that resides in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure VCN. The center host shows the installed VMware software components for compute (vSphere), network (NSX-T), and storage (vSAN) support. The NSX overlay manages the flow of traffic between the VMs, and between the VMs and the rest of the resources in the solution. The VCN here includes various gateways that allow connectivity between the SDDC and an on-premises network, the internet, and the Oracle Services Network.

When you provision an SDDC, you can enable HCX Manager (not shown in the diagram). HCX is an application mobility platform that simplifies application migration, workload rebalancing, and business continuity across data centers and clouds. For HCX to function properly in your VMware solution, you must have:
  • A FastConnect connection for intersite communication
  • A NAT gateway as required by HCX Manager for license activation, updates, and VMware enhanced support
Note

HCX Manager requires connectivity to a VMware SaaS portal provided by a NAT gateway. Read more about VMware's requirements for HCX Manager: Why does HCX Manager require connectivity for activation and updates?

About the VMware Software

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's VMware software bundle contains vSphere, vSAN, NSX, vCenter, and HCX components to support compute, storage, and network needs for a fully functional VMware environment.

  • vSphere: vSphere is VMware's virtualization platform for unified management of the SDDC's CPU, storage, and networking infrastructure. Two key components of vSphere are ESXi hypervisor and vCenter Server.
  • NSX-T: NSX-T Data Center provides the SDDC with its virtual networking and security capabilities. The NSX-T deployment includes NSX Manager unified appliances with NSX-T Local Manager and NSX-T Controller, and NSX-T Edge nodes.
  • vSAN: Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDCs use VMware's vSAN storage technology, which provides a single shared datastore for compute andx management workloads (VMs).
  • HCX: The Hybrid Cloud Extension is an application mobility platform that removes complexity from application and workload migration. HCX is optionally installed as a plug-in when you set up your SDDC.

The following table shows the available versions of the software bundle, along with the version of each component:

Software Version vSphere vSAN NSX-T

6.7 update 3

 6.7 U3

6.7 U3

 2.5.1

6.5 update 3

 6.5 U3

6.5 U3

 2.5.1
7.0 update 1 7.0 U1 7.0 U1 3.0.2.0

When you provision the SDDC, you select the version of this software bundle to install on the ESXi hosts. You can change the SDDC's software version later. When you add ESXi hosts to the SDDC, the version of software installed on new hosts is the version currently associated with the SDDC.

Note

  • If you change the VMware software version after provisioning an SDDC, the new version is used only on ESXi hosts that you add to the SDDC. The software version of existing hosts is not changed.
  • Changes that you make to the SDDC by using the Oracle Cloud InfrastructureConsole, API, or CLI are not automatically made in vCenter. For example, if you change the software version or the SSH keys, the change applies only to ESXi hosts that you add to the SDDC. To change these properties for existing hosts, you must make the applicable updates in vCenter manually.

Upgrading From vSphere Version 6.5 or 6.7 to 7.0.

Architectural changes to the platform from vSphere version 6.x to 7.x can potentially cause loss of data or connectivity when implementing an in-place upgrade. Oracle doesn't recommend or support an in-place upgrade of a vSphere SDDC from versions 6.5 or 6.7 to vSphere 7.0 or later. Instead, deploy a new vSphere 7.0 SDDC on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure VMware Solution and use workload mobility technologies such as VMware HCX to migrate workloads to the new vSphere 7 SDDC.

For more detail on migrating VMware workloads between SDDC clusters, refer to the playbook Migrate your on-premises VMware workloads to the cloud.

Working with SDDCs

You use the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console, API, or CLI to provision and manage SDDC resources. You use VMware's vCenter utility to create and manage workloads in the SDDC.

See the following topics for information and instructions on how to create and manage Oracle Cloud VMware Solution resources:

Additional Documentation Resources

The following Oracle Cloud VMware Solution solution playbooks and white papers are available: