Synchronizing network pods

You can update a pod after it has been onboarded. This capability enables you to scale a pod when necessary.

For example, a pod might be running out of virtual ports for virtual machine (VM) provisioning, because the pod was originally configured with one vswitch and a maximum of 120 virtual ports. You can update the pod with an additional access switch, which will provide more virtual ports for any new network containers that are created for the pod.

Other scenarios for updating a pod include adding new networks, load balancer nodes, or firewalls to the pod.

This topic contains the following sections:

• • To update an onboarded pod
  • To update a virtual cluster

The following BMC Communities video (3:02) describes how to scale pod-level networks and use them in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. This involves adding resources to a BMC Network Automation pod and then synchronizing the pod (and sometimes a virtual cluster) in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management.

 https://youtu.be/gWvBa1ck-DU

To update an onboarded pod

1. In BMC Network Automation, update the pod. See Editing-a-pod. You can add components to the pod, or remove nodes (Switch, Firewall, or Loadbalancer) from the pod that are no longer being used. You must ensure that the node is not referenced in any network container prior to removal. 

   Note

   If you are removing a hypervisor switch node from a pod and if it is the only hypervisor switch being referenced by an onboarded cluster, then the Synchronize Pod operation will fail in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. To remove a hypervisor switch node from the pod, there must be one or more alternate switches common between the pod and the on-boarded cluster, otherwise the Synchronize Pod fails to remove the switch from BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management.

2. From the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration Console, click the vertical Workspaces menu on the left side of the window and select Resources.
3. Under Quick Links on the left, click Pods under the General section.

4. Select the pod you want to synchronize.

   Note

   Starting with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.1 patch 1 and later, new pod-level networks can be synchronized.

   While creating a new network, ensure that you add all required nodes before you perform the Synchronize Pod operation. You can only synchronize new networks or new nodes which you add in BMC Network Automation. Any changes made to the pod which do not involve adding any new networks or nodes are not synchronized.

   If you add new Pod-level networks to a new pod node, which is not associated with an existing virtual cluster, ensure that you onboard the relevant virtual cluster onto the pod. If the node is already present on an already onboarded virtual cluster, ensure that you perform Synchronize Virtual Cluster.

5. Click the Synchronize Pod icon to synchronize the network pod with any changes to the pod since it was onboarded.
6. (Optional) Click the Pending Activity section to view the progress of the synchronization.
7. After the pod is synchronized, you must synchronize the associated virtual cluster as described in the following section.

To update a virtual cluster

To update the virtual hosts, virtual resource pools, and virtual disk repositories associated with a virtual cluster, complete the following steps:

1. Under Quick Links on the left, click Resources under the Compute section.
2. Select the virtual cluster you want to refresh from the table.
3. Click the Synchronize Virtual Cluster icon .

After the activity is marked as complete, you can click the Refresh icon in the upper-right corner of the window to refresh the Resources table so that the newly onboarded resources appear in the table.