VMware Holodeck 1.3 Review – basically two nested VLC VCF environments side by side

I just finished installing and setting up holodeck in my lab environment, this is basically two nested VMware cloud foundations (VCF) environments. I wont go into installing it as the current blogs out there are pretty good with lots of pictures and videos. I will put the links below.

The cool things about it.

1. Different IP addressing across the two VCF environments
2. Deploys a virtual router in the middle of the VCF environments (so if you want you can setup NSX-T federation on it, setup HCX, or even SRM)
3. virtual router has connections to both port groups for Site A and B
4. Its is completely isolated as it is not connected to any physical uplinks on your ESXi host
5. All nested virtual machines so it can sit on one ESXi Host.
6. Has all the cool stuff – DNS, NTP, BGP, DHCP, Active directory, Certificate authority on Windows 2019 eval box that is valid for 6 months
7. Current latest VCF version 4.5

My ESXi host that I installed it on is

VMware ESXi, 8.0.0, 20513097
PowerEdge R730
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 v4 @ 2.00GHz
256gb DDR4
4TB SSD Samsung evo

Yes the memory was almost maxed out.

The virtual machines on the host

Port groups look like

SITE A logical diagram – https://images.core.vmware.com/sites/default/files/imported-images/node_3944_0329-124629/40997-0329-124627/40997-0329-124627-3.png

SITE B logical diagram – https://images.core.vmware.com/sites/default/files/imported-images/node_3944_0329-124629/40997-0329-124627/40997-0329-124627-5.png

My comments.

I like the fact it has all the extras you would expect in a customers environment such as AD, Certificate authority etc.. As you can test and play with a complete VCF environment not just the VMware deployed products. This is something I would use or recommend to customers as a sandpit environment. This is a great training environment as well without consequence of impacting your NON production or production environment. The only thing you will need is a beefy box (as you can see my box was not lol) and licenses. So the licenses you will need are NSX-T, ESXi, vCenter and vSAN, I do know vmug advantage membership provides licenses for like 250$ a year but check if they will work for VCF. Oh before I forget I paid $1200 for my R730 from ebay Australia website.

Comment if you have any questions.