VMware prerequisites

View the prerequisites for using IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack with VMware.

IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack is compatible with the following versions of VMware products:

Table 1. Supported VMware products
VMware products	Versions	Editions
VMware vCenter Server 6	6 to 6.7 Note: VMware vSphere 6.7 is supported from IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack 4.3 FP 11 onwards.	Essentials edition Standard edition Enterprise Plus edition Enterprise edition
VMware vCenter Server 5	5 to 5.5	Essentials edition Standard edition
VMware vSphere 5	5 to 5.5	Essentials Plus edition Standard edition Enterprise edition Enterprise Plus edition

IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack is compatible with existing installations of VMware vSphere managed by VMware vCenter. Ensure that the VMware vCenter Server product is installed, operational, and managing a VMware vSphere environment.

The configuration of the VMware products is outside the scope of this document. Refer to the product documentation for configuration and troubleshooting instructions.

Links

VMware vCenter Server website at http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html.
VMware vSphere website at http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/overview.html.
VMware Documentation website at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/

IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack supports only Windows and Linux® guest operating systems, which are supported by vCenter and ESXi and allow guest customizations. For more information, see the following resources:

Customization of certain Microsoft Windows operating systems requires Microsoft Sysprep Tools. See the information for your version of vCenter for detailed instructions about obtaining the Sysprep Tools and where to store the tools on the vCenter Servers file systems.

Configuration considerations for VMware

Virtual machines that are deployed and managed by OpenStack cannot be modified from vCenter and continue to be managed by OpenStack. vCenter functions, such as vMotion and storage vMotion, are not supported for virtual machines and storage that are deployed through IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack.
Use DRS-enabled clusters for advanced placement
Allow vCenter to place the user workload on the best host machine by using a DRS-enabled cluster within vCenter and setting the appliance target to use the cluster or a resource pool that is defined in the cluster. This allows vCenter to manage the available host resources. Otherwise, the appliance target is an individual host machine or a resource pool on a host machine.
Place vCenter server and IBM Cloud Manager - Self Service on the same network.
For best performance, it is recommended the vCenter server and IBM Cloud Manager - Self Service are on the same network.
If the virtual machine that installs the vCenter software is also in the same vCenter that it is managing to, it is suggested to ignore discovery for this VM. You should also avoid managing it from OpenStack since the vCenter virtual machine is critical and all management for the VMware cloud is through the vCenter. It is also suggested that the vCenter virtual machine is planned outside of the vCenter to which it is being managed.