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A common question that I receive is around the offline upload utility for SDDC Manager when importing VxRail Bundles. This process is very handy for when working in a DC that does not allow external internet connection or on secure sites.

I will break this down into two section. The first section is how to download the VxRail software onto your laptop. You might think that it is as simple as heading over to the dell.com/support and pulling the latest bundle from from there but unfortunately it is not.

Introducing. The LCM bundle Transfer Utility. This can be found within the SDDC Manager VM . Using the tool you will need to create a marker file. This is a .json file that lists all the running software on the system. No other customer data is contained within this json.

cd /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-tools/bin 
./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --generateMarker

Copy out the markefile and Marker MD5 file from the /home/vcf/ directory. Also copy the entire lcm-tools Folder from the SDDC Manager VM onto a workstation that has internet connection. Ensure that Laptop has Java installed. I use winscp to help.

I have copied the folder on to the c:\ of my Windows desktop along with the marker files.

Using PowerShell I ran the LCM Transfer utility to start the download of VxRail Bundle. It will also download several other key files that you will need as part of this process. A quick break down of the syntax user accounts

1. -depotUser = your MyVMware.com account
2. -pdu = Your DellEMC Credentials.

Any DellEMC Folk reading you can use your NT Creds here for the -pdu option.

lcm-bundle-transfer-util -download "downloadPartnerBundle" -outputDirectory C:\lcm-tools -depotUser myemail@domain.com -pdu myemail@domain.com -markerFile C:\lcm-tools\markerFile -markerMd5File C:\lcm-tools\markerFile.md5

You will be prompted for the relevant passwords. Once the download is complete you will have 5 files that you need to be concerned with. The first 4 are on the lcm-tools folder. The VxRail.zip will be located in the bundles folder.

1. partnerBundleMetadata.json
2. softwareCompatibilitySets.json
3. deltaFileDownloaded
4. deltaFileDownloaded.md5
5. VxRail Bundle – L100842_VxRail-7.0.100-Composite-Upgrade-Slim-Package-for-7.0.x.zip ( name will vary depending on version – no not rename)

This second section will deal with importing the VxRail bundle into SDDC Manager. Copy the 5 files mentioned above from c:\lcm-tools to the \tmp directory on SDDC Manager. I created a folder called VxRail-offline and placed all the files in there. If you use the same naming convention you should be able to copy my syntax line for line.

Navigate to the correct folder. Elevate your user account permissions with SDDC Manager by running su to switch user and enter the root password. Then copy the files to the directories as listed below. Then make the vcf_lcm:vcf user the owner and set the correct permissions.

cd /tmp/VxRail-offline
su
cp partnerBundleMetadata.json /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/partnerBundleMetadata.json                                           
cp softwareCompatibilitySets.json /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/softwareCompatibilitySets.json                                     
cp DL100842_VxRail-7.0.100-Composite-Upgrade-Slim-Package-for-7.0.x.zip /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/bundles/DL100842_VxRail-7.0.100-Composite-Upgrade-Slim-Package-for-7.0.x.zip
cp deltaFileDownloaded /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/bundles/deltaFileDownloaded
cp deltaFileDownloaded.md5 /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/bundles/deltaFileDownloaded.md5
chown vcf_lcm:vcf -R /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/partnerBundleMetadata.json
chown vcf_lcm:vcf -R /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/softwareCompatibilitySets.json
chown vcf_lcm:vcf -R /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/bundles/
chmod -R 0777 /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/softwareCompatibilitySets.json
chmod -R 0777 /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/partnerBundleMetadata.json
chmod -R 0777 /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/bundles/

Once complete. Switch back to the vcf user using Exit and navigate to the lcm-tool bin folder. Then run the upload function

exit
cd /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-tools/bin
./lcm-bundle-transfer-util -upload "uploadPartnerBundle" -bundleDirectory  /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/bundle/depot/local/bundles/

View From SDDC Manager.

And your done. Now you are ready to update your VxRail Cluster via SDDC Manager. Hope this helps.