Managing stretched private cloud resources and activity

After you create a stretched private cloud, you can view detailed information about it, manage its resources and activity, and access its VMware management appliances.

Each stretched private cloud contains one or more clusters that are stretched across two Google Cloud zones. Each cluster contains nodes that correspond to ESXi hosts.

The autoscale policies applied to clusters in a stretched private cloud monitor resource consumption and automatically add or remove nodes from the cluster. You can also manually expand or shrink a private cloud by adding or removing nodes from clusters in that private cloud. For example, you can create a stretched private cloud based on current needs and then expand the private cloud by adding nodes as consumption grows.

Important: Adjustments to clusters assign VMware Engine node quota corresponding to your Google Cloud project. To increase your quota, see Quotas and limits.

To manage a stretched private cloud, start by accessing its resource summary page:

1. Access the Google Cloud VMware Engine portal.
2. From the main navigation, go to Resources.
3. Select the stretched private cloud you want to manage from the list of private clouds.

Viewing a private cloud summary

The summary provides information about your stretched private cloud including its name, number of vSphere clusters, number of nodes, location, operational state, and more. The summary page also includes the DNS servers deployed on the private cloud.

From the private cloud summary page, you can perform the following actions:

• Launch vSphere Client. Access the vCenter for this stretched private cloud.

• Expand. Expand this stretched private cloud by adding a minimum of two nodes.

• Shrink nodes. Shrink this stretched private cloud by removing nodes.

• Delete the private cloud. Delete a stretched private cloud, including all of the VMs, vCenter configuration, and data. Before deleting, back up all systems and data.

• Change vSphere privileges. Elevate your privileges to perform a particular task on this stretched private cloud.

• Copy IP addresses of DNS servers. Get a list of DNS servers on your private cloud. You can set up DNS forwarding from on-premises DNS servers to your private cloud DNS servers. For more information about DNS forwarding, see Configuring DNS for name resolution for private cloud vCenter access from on-premises workstations.

Expanding a stretched private cloud

A stretched private cloud consists of one or more vSphere clusters, each containing multiple nodes. When adding nodes to a stretched private cloud, you add a minimum of two nodes (or in multiples of two nodes) to the existing cluster or create a new cluster. A stretched private cloud can be expanded multiple times as long as you stay within the overall node limits.

If a stretched cluster is expanded by two nodes, one node will be added to the primary site, and the other node will be added to the secondary site.

As part of the new cluster configuration, Google configures the VMware infrastructure. The settings include storage settings for vSAN disk groups,VMware High Availability, and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

To expand a stretched private cloud, do the following:

1. On the private cloud summary page, click Add Nodes.

2. Choose whether to add nodes to one of your existing clusters or create a new vSphere cluster. As you make changes, the summary information on the page updates.

   • To add nodes to one of your existing clusters, select Add nodes to existing. Select the cluster you want to expand and enter the number of nodes to add per zone.

   • To add a new cluster, select Create new. Then, provide the following details:

   • Enter a name for the cluster.

   • Select an existing vSphere data center.

   • Select the number of nodes per zone. Each new cluster must have at least three nodes per zone.

   • Optional: Click the Customize Cores toggle if you want to reduce the number of available cores for each node in the management cluster. For details, see Custom core counts.

3. Click Submit.

Shrinking a stretched private cloud

When removing nodes from a stretched private cloud, you remove nodes from the existing cluster or delete the entire cluster.

To shrink a stretched private cloud, do the following:

1. On the private cloud summary page, click Remove nodes.
2. Select the cluster that you want to shrink or delete.
3. Select Remove one node per zone or Delete the whole cluster.
4. Verify the cluster capacity.
5. Click Submit to begin the process of removing nodes.

To monitor the progress, select Activity > Tasks.

This process requires resynchronization in vSAN and can take a few hours,depending on the data.

Restrictions

The process of removing nodes from your stretched private cloud has the following restrictions:

• You can't remove nodes from a cluster with six (6) nodes (three (3) per zone).
• The total storage consumed can't exceed the total capacity after removing nodes from a cluster.
• You can't delete the first cluster that was created when the private cloud was created.

Viewing subnets

To view the list of defined management subnets for your private cloud, select the Subnets tab. The list includes the HCX subnets created when the private cloud was created. The list of subnets also includes the attached firewall table for each subnet.

Viewing activity information

To view the activity information for your private cloud, select the Activity tab. The displayed information is a filtered list of all activities for your private cloud. This page shows up to 25 recent activities. For a full list of activities and associated actions, see Monitoring VMware Engine activity.

Viewing vSphere management network

To view the list of VMware management resources and virtual machines that are currently configured on your private cloud, select the vSphere Management Network tab. Information includes the software version, fully qualified domain name (FQDN), and IP address of the resources.