Before you can get started with NSX+, you have to get started with vSphere+. Part of vSphere+ is the vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) appliance, which is installed on-premises (vCenter Server adjacent). This appliance will be used to onboard your vCenter Server but will also be responsible for onboarding the local NSX Manager. Once onboarded, the local NSX Manager will communicate directly with VMware’s Cloud Services Platform (CSP) via a gRPC connection.
You’ll find that deploying the VCGW appliance is somewhat similar to deploying a vCenter Server. You’ll need to download the ISO and then mount it to get access to the installer files.
Navigate to the ui-installer > win32 folder.
Double-click on the installer.exe file.
Click on the Deploy VMware Cloud Gateway button.
Accept the EULA and click the Next button.
Provide appropriate ESXi or vCenter Server information. In this example, I’m deploying it to a vCenter Server.
Click the Next button.
Click the Yes button.
Choose an appropriate Datacenter/Folder for the VCGW appliance.
Click the Next button.
Choose an appropriate Cluster/ESXi Host for the VCGW appliance.
Click the Next button.
Set the VM name and root password.
Click the Next button.
Chose an appropriate datastore for the VCGW appliance.
Click the Next button.
Configure the VCGW appliance network settings as appropriate.
Click the Next button.
Configure the VCGW appliance NTP settings as appropriate.
Click the Finish button.
You should see the VCGW VM getting created in the vSphere Client at this point.
Eventually you should see the VCGW VM deployed and powered on.
And the installer interface will let you know that the deployment is complete.
Click the Launch button.
At this point you should be ready to onboard your vCenter Server(s).
Also, if you are more inclined to install from the command line, there is a CLI option available. With the installer ISO mounted, you can navigate into the cli-installer\win32 folder and run the vcgw-deploy.exe command. There is a templates folder that will have several example json files that you can use as examples for your configuration. The following is a json file that would deploy the VCGW appliance in the same manner as was done above.
{
"__version": "2.13.0",
"new_vcsa": {
"vc": {
"hostname": "vcsa-01b.corp.vmw",
"username": "administrator@vsphere.local",
"password": "VMware1!",
"deployment_network": "Management",
"datacenter": [
"RegionB01"
],
"datastore": "vol2",
"target": [
"RegionB01-Compute"
]
},
"appliance": {
"thin_disk_mode": true,
"name": "vcgw-01b"
},
"network": {
"ip_family": "ipv4",
"mode": "static",
"ip": "192.168.210.29",
"gateway": "192.168.210.1",
"dns_servers": [
"192.168.210.10"
],
"prefix": "24",
"system_name": "vcgw-01b.corp.vmw"
},
"os": {
"password": "VMware1!",
"ntp_servers": "192.168.100.1",
"ssh_enable": true
}
}
}And the complete command to install this template would be vcgw-deploy.exe install --accept-eula vcgw-01b.json.