Intersight PVA Greenfield catch 22

[MikeErnst]

When deploying a greenfield UCS Domain and there isn't already a vCenter or no way to allow connectivity from a legacy vCenter to the new UCS Domain, what are the options for deploying a PVA?

The issue I see is to deploy a 5108 or 9508 you need to deploy a UCS domain to deploy a VCSA, to deploy the PVA OVA... which isn't possible since you'd need to wipe the FI's to get to IMM which would wipe out the PVA.

Would a stand alone host with ESXi be required to at least get the PVA up?

[Brian Morrissey · Accepted solution]

For Intersight Managed Mode deployments, at least in my opinion you should have your CVA/PVA located outside of the equipment being managed. One scenario that comes specifically to mind is a nested PVA and a mistake was made when configuring the vlan list causing all vNICs to go offline. As the vNICs all went offline including the one the PVA used they were unable to go back and quickly undo the change. Just something to keep in mind with that design decision.

Any outside host with vCenter/DNS/NTP services etc would allow the PVA deployment to configure the greenfield environment