A four-part VCF 9.1 lab build: a one-host vSAN ESA cluster added to an existing domain, NSX VPC networking without edges, and a Supervisor with one control plane VM.
This series follows one lab build from start to finish: adding a single GPU host to an existing VCF 9.1 management domain as its own cluster, then running a vSphere Supervisor on it as the base for VCF Private AI Services. It uses no new vCenter, no new NSX Manager and no NSX edges. Read the parts in order; each one picks up where the last stopped, including the failures and how they were fixed.
This is a lab and POC design. A one-host cluster has no redundancy, and the SDDC Manager properties in Part 1 are lab workarounds, not a supported production configuration.
Building a one-host vSAN ESA cluster: commissioning the host, the cluster spec, and the FTT=0 default policy that fixes FAILED_TO_CREATE_FILE_INSIDE_DATASTORE.
NSX VPC networking without edges: a distributed VLAN connection on the default transit gateway, an external IP block, and a two-node VNA cluster.
One-Host Supervisor on VCF 9.1, Part 4: Enabling a Supervisor with One Control Plane VM
In Part 3 we gave NSX a way out without edges. Now we enable the Supervisor on the one-host cluster, with a single control plane VM instead of the usual three. Two things stalled it along the way, and I headed off a third before it could. I’ll go through all of them, then prove the result with a test pod.
Before you begin vSphere HA and DRS on, HA admission control off (Part 2) The FTT=0 policy compatible with the vSAN datastore (Part 2) Five consecutive free IPs on the management network for the Supervisor (mine: 10.1.1.85 to 10.1.1.89) DNS servers that answer from the address they were queried on (more on that below) Then ask vCenter whether the cluster can take a Supervisor on VPC networking:
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One-Host Supervisor on VCF 9.1, Part 3: NSX VPC Networking Without Edges
In Part 2 we built the one-host cluster. Before we can enable a Supervisor on it, NSX needs a way to get VPC traffic in and out. My management domain has NSX with an overlay transport zone, but no edge cluster, no Tier-0 and no Tier-1. In VCF 9.1 that is fine: a Supervisor on VPC networking can use a distributed transit gateway and a small cluster of Virtual Network Appliances (VNAs) instead of edges.
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One-Host Supervisor on VCF 9.1, Part 2: Building a One-Host vSAN ESA Cluster
In Part 1 we set up SDDC Manager to accept a single-host cluster. Now we add the GPU host to the domain as its own one-host cluster. In my lab that host is esx-05a, a spare nested host, and the new cluster is cluster-mgmt-02a in the management domain mgmt-a.
This is where the series hit its first failure, and the fix is the part I would have liked to read about before I started.
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One-Host Supervisor on VCF 9.1, Part 1: Allowing Single-Host Clusters in SDDC Manager
I was working with a customer, and we were going through William Lam’s post on running VCF 9.1.1 on a single ESX host. They wanted a vSphere Supervisor so they could run VCF Private AI Services later, but only one of their hosts had GPUs in it. Buying two more GPU hosts just to meet a cluster minimum was not an option. So the question was simple: can we add a one-host cluster to the existing VCF domain and run a Supervisor on it?
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