Introduction
Dell EMC just released VxRail 4.7.300 which contains vSphere 6.7u3 and vCenter 6.7u3. VxRail 4.7.300 supports VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 3.8.1 although the documentation for both have not been updated as of yet.
When a new VxRaiL system is initialized, we have an option of either using an existing external vCenter or ask VxRail to build the vCenter/PSC as part of its deployment. The second is referred to as an internal/embedded vCenter and will always be deployed with an external PSC. Do not mix internal/embedded vCenter with embedded or external PSC, an internal/embedded vCenter in this context means that it was deployed using VxRail Manager and will always have an external PSC as per VVD/VCF recommendation.
In order to comply with VVD and subsequently deploy VCF on VxRail, the internal/embedded VxRail deployed vCenter and PSC need to be externalized so to speak in the sense that we need to tell VxRail not to manage/update these VMs anymore as part of its overall system management. This is a must do when doing VVD and/or VCF on VxRail.
The way to do so before 3.7.400 was to run the vvd_vc_conversion.pyc script provided by Dell EMC on the VxRail Manager VM.
.It is pretty straightforward and I have already documented the same in an earlier post . In 3.7.400 there seems to be a new GUI automated method to do the same which would run the script in the backend without having to go with the manual procedure which is really cool. The below is not yet reflected in Solve or other Dell EMC documentation because the same has not been updated yet with VxRail 3.7.400 and VCF 3.8.1 updates.
Configuration
1- Make sure to take a snapshot of the VxRail Manager, vCenter, and PSC VMs since the procedure is one-way and cannot be reverted.
2- Navigate to Cluster – Configure – VxRail – System – Convert vCenter Mode . The vCenter Mode is embedded which means was deployed by VxRail.
3- Click on Edit in Convert vCenter Mode and input your vsphere.local SSO user and password. The VxRail Manager VM will be restarted automatically after the procedure is completed successfully.
VxRail Manager will now restart so give it a couple of minutes until its back online and connected to vCenter. The new VxRail Systems tab will no longer have a section named Convert vCenter Mode.
4- In order to verify that the vCenter is now considered external by VxRail, Right Click on the Cluster name, choose VxRail, and click on Shutdown. We will not actually shutdown the cluster, but the shutdown verification tests will show if vCenter is now external or still part of the VxRail config files.
![clip_image002[6]](https://vzerotohero.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/clip_image0026.jpg "clip_image002[6]")
The cluster shutdown validation should fail with Error 2 non-VxRail VMs are running, which means that VxRail does not consider the vCenter and PSC VMs as part of its configuration and thus cannot take action to shut them down automatically.
Conclusion
There are other very important updated with 4.7.300 especially around the full vCenter HTML5 integration for VxRail Manager and the vSAN enhancements that came with vSphere 6.7u3 specifically around performance and rebuilds.