vCenter static VM connectivity without dvSwitches

Background: ViaSat created a vCenter deployment long before buying Cloudshell. This deployment has ~100 VMs already spun up, and all potential port groups and VLANS already created. Users connect these VMs as end points to our satellite communication system for numerous testing activities. They modify the VLAN associated with the 2^nd NIC on the VM in order to connect to their test setup. VLAN IDs follow a convention so there is no ambiguity about which lab setup you are connecting your VM to.

Single cluster with two esx nodes, no HA, DRS or vMotion. Networking is all standard vSwitch, with default network failover on 2 nics for the testing networks. All ports and associated vlan setting are currently created in advance.

ViaSat is now integrating Cloudshell and we want to use the vCenter and vCenter Static VM shells provided by Quali. However, Quali’s Static VM shell requires our vCenter deployment to be configured with a dvSwitch for VM connectivity. Our vCenter does not currently use dvSwitches because it did not need to for our initial deployment. Migrating the deployment to use vSwitches is complicated by 2 issues:

• 1.)dvSwitches require a different, more expensive tier of licensing to use in a vCenter deployment. We would incur additional license costs in order to conform to Quali’s Static VM shell’s requirements

• 2.)Cloudshell dynamically creates and destroys port groups when connecting vCenter VMs. Cloudshell does not support assigning existing port groups to new VM connections or VM deployments. ViaSat already has all required port groups defined. It will create additional overhead for ViaSat to find a hybrid solution for port group creation and assignment while we are transitioning our lab users to Cloudshell.

ViaSat has code for changing VLANs of our static VMs that uses pyvmoni, the same underlying python library that powers both of Quali’s vCenter shells. This code does not need to interact with dvSwitches.

Request: ViaSat requests modifications be made to the Static VM shell to allow for VLAN assignment changes and Cloudshell connectivity operations to be performed on a vCenter deployment that lacks dvSwitches.