This post is a quick glance of GCVE private cloud provision. Based on the hand-on experience, the provisioning and configuration is very simple and easy to follow.
In Google Cloud Portal, navigate to COMPUTER-> VMware Engine, you will then be redirected to a dedicated page for Google Cloud Private Engine.
Before provisioning the first GCVE private cloud, not necessary, but it is recommended to configure a few network components in advance.
- Private Connection – For each project, at least one private connection (Also called Private Service Access) is required to be setup to connect the GCVE to the Google Cloud (shared) VPC. Private connection will be shared between private clouds in same project and utilized to connect GCVE private clouds with other GCP virtual machine instance, GCP services and on-premise interconnect.
- Regional Setting – The regional settings is used to enable the internet service (Allow the GCVE VM to access internet) and Public IP services (allow end user access GCVE VM/services via public IP addresses).
When provisioning the private cloud, you only need to provide a few configuration parameters: private cloud name, location, Multi-node/Single Node, Node number, vSphere/vSAN subnets CIDR range and HCX subnets CIDR range.
There is an optional setting to customize ESXi host CPU cores. You can reduce the core numbers in ESXi host, however, reducing the cores won’t reduce the cost. This option is designed to be utilized to fit specific software licensing requirement based on CPU cores.
It might take one to a few hours to provision the initial nodes depends on how many nodes requested. Based on the testing, a single node GCVE private cloud can be provisioned in less than 40 minutes.
Once private cloud is provisioned, the configuration details and management network interface for vCenter/HCX/NSX-T can be easily identified form the GCVE private cloud management portal.
It is noted that, when the private cloud is shown as provisioned, the vSphere cluster still need additional time to finalize the configuration, including deploy VCSA, NSX, HCX and etc. This process can be monitored in Resource->Private Cloud>Clusters.
