vCloud Director

This quick start video provides a simplified, step-by-step set of instructions for creating a new virtual machine on the StratoGen vCloud platform. The StratoGen vCloud platform is built upon VMware vCloud Director 1.5. This video is a supplement to the vCloud director 1.5 user manual which provides comprehensive information about the platform.

Step 1 > Log in - Using a supported browser (Internet Explorer 7 or above, or Mozilla Firefox 3 or above) connect to the URL as provided by StratoGen. A typical URL is of the format https://mycloud.stratogen.com/cloud/org/your-organisation. Enter the username and password supplied to login to your account.

Step 2 > Select the ‘My Cloud’ tab - The initial homepage for your cloud is displayed. Now click on the ‘My Cloud’ tab. In the following steps I will take you through the steps required to create a new virtual machine in your cloud. All virtual machines must reside in a vApp (a vApp is a container that holds 1 or more virtual machines).

Step 3 > Click the ‘+’ symbol to create a new vApp from a catalog. You will now create a new vApp by clicking on the + icon

Step 4 > Select Catalog - You can upload your own virtual machine templates or ISO installation media into your organization’s catalog, but in this example we will be using one of the pre-built templates supplied by StratoGen. Click on the catalog drop down list and select ‘Public catalogs’.

Step 5 > Select vApp Template - Select the required operating system from the list of vApp Templates. In this example we will be creating a virtual machine with CentOS 5.5 installed, so we select the CentOS 5.5 vApp. This will create a vApp which contains a single CentOS 5.5 virtual machine.

Step 6 > Name your vApp - Enter a name for your new vApp, and a short description if required.

Step 7 > Configure virtual machine - Enter a computer name for your new virtual machine and then click on the ‘Network’ drop down list to select a network to attach it to. In this instance we will select a ‘Direct Internet Connection’. Always leave the IP assignment as ‘Static – IP Pool’. We are now ready to create our vApp and virtual machine. Click ‘Finish’.

Step 8 > vApp creation - That’s it. Your new vApp and virtual machine will now be created. Your virtual machine’s network settings will be configured automatically and a new root/administrator password will be automatically generated and assigned. We will also review our new virtual machine and note our new password.

Step 9 > vApp display - Once the creation of your vApp has completed, ‘Stopped’ will be displayed as the status. Select the vApp, and then click on the name. A visual depiction of the vApp is displayed. Now click the ‘Virtual Machines’ tab.

Step 10 > Virtual machine properties - This tab shows us the virtual machines in the vApp. In our case this is a single virtual machine called CentOS 5.5. Right click on your virtual machine and select properties. We can now view the properties of our virtual machine. To find the newly assigned root/administrator password for your VM select the ‘Guest OS Customization’ tab. Your new password is displayed after the ‘Auto generate password’ text.

VMware vCloud Directo (VCD) enables customers to build a private cloud–based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering within their organization. By providing a secure, on-demand ability for end users to deploy workloads, companies can realize a level of agility previously thought impossible.

This VMware vCloud Director 1.5 Evaluation Guide is designed to provide a guided, hands-on evaluation of the most compelling and relevant features of vCloud Director. It walks users through a series of procedures, each building upon the previous. When completed, the evaluator will have a working configuration that illustrates the key concepts that should be understood before deploying a production private cloud solution with vCloud Director.

Because this guide is to be leveraged for evaluation purposes, it has been written to require the least amount of hardware resources possible. This enables users who do not have a dedicated test lab to still fully evaluate the capabilities and concepts of vCloud Director. This purpose-built evaluation environment should not be considered as a template for deploying a production environment.

VMware vCloud Director 1.5 Evaluation Guide

VMware vCloud Director is a software product that provides the ability to build secure, multi-tenant clouds by pooling virtual infrastructure resources into virtual datacenters and exposing them to users through Webbased portals and programmatic interfaces as a fully-automated, catalog-based service.

vCloud Director relies on vSphere resources to provide CPU and memory to run virtual machines. In addition, vSphere datastores provide storage for virtual machine files and other files necessary for virtual machine operations. vCloud Director also utilizes vSphere distributed switches and vSphere port groups to support virtual machine networking. You can use these underlying vSphere resources to create cloud resources.

Cloud resources are an abstraction of their underlying vSphere resources. They provide the compute and memory resources for vCloud Director virtual machines and vApps. A vApp is a virtual system that contains one or more individual virtual machines, along with parameters that define operational details. Cloud resources also provide access to storage and network connectivity. Cloud resources include provider and organization virtual datacenters, external networks, organization networks, and network pools. Before you can add cloud resources to vCloud Director, you must add vSphere resources.

The vCloud Director software is distributed as a Linux executable file but also as a virtual appliance stored in Open Virtualization Format (OVF).  vCloud Director 1.5 components and the database are packaged into this vCloud Director virtual appliance.

Download VMware vCloud Director 1.5 virtual appliance

For customers looking to rapidly install an evaluation environment, vCloud Director is distributed in a virtual appliance format file (.ova) for use in a limited-scale environment.The virtual appliance includes a pre-configured Oracle XE database installed on a CentOS VM. The virtual appliance is designed to easily set up your evaluation by importing to your existing vCenter Server. Please refer to the VMware vCloud Director Evaluation Guide for more information and details on deploying this vCloud Director Appliance.

In vCloud Director 1.0, VM provisioning operations resulted in the creation of full clones, delivered to users within minutes through a simple web portal. With the enablement of linked clones in vCloud Director 1.5, users no longer have to wait for a full copy each time they deploy a vApp. vCloud Director “links” clones together so that common elements are stored only once. This improves agility in the cloud by reducing provisioning time, from minutes down to seconds, and reducing the cost of storage by up to 10x.

• Builds on vSphere and scalesup to 10,000 VMs and 25 vCenter Servers
• Creates virtual datacenters, by pooling resources into new units of consumption
• Securely enables the cloudwith vShield, LDAP authentication, and RBAC
• Provides self-service portals and standardized infrastructure catalogs
• Isolates users into organizationswith unique catalogs, policies, and LDAP
• vCloud Director builds on vSphere to transform IT
• vCloud API enables inter-cloud portability, programmatic control, and integrationsIT
• Fast Provisioning Utilizing linked clones dramatically speeds up provisioning time and reduces storage costs.
• vApp Custom Guest Properties: Allows developers and other users to easily pass user data into guest OSes using OVF descriptors.
• vCloud Messages and Blocking Tasks: Programmatically connect vCloud Director to enterprise systems (e.g. CMDB) enabling end-to-end system automation.
• Microsoft SQL Server Support: Now runs on SQL Server (as well as Oracle).
• vShield Edge VPN integration: Programmatically create site to site IPSec-VPN tunnels to connect across clouds.
• Expanded vCloud API: Additional commands added to the vCloud API namespace to include all GUI-accessible actions and enable broader integration and scripting using the API.

The VMware vCloud Connector, a free plug-in that will allow all VMware vSphere administrators to immediately begin deploying and managing virtual machines (VMs) across VMware vCloud Powered cloud services from within the VMware vSphere Client. In this video I’ll show you how to configure both the vCenter server and the vCloud Director and how to upload a virtual machine to the vCloud Director.

 

This video is also added to my iTunes channel which can be found at Online VMware Training. It looks great on an iPad.

This video is a follow-up from "Video – Deploying the vCloud Connector"

VMware vCloud Director is a software solution that enables enterprises to build secure, multitenant private clouds by pooling infrastructure resources into virtual datacenters and exposing them to users through Web-based portals and programmatic interfaces as fully automated, catalog-based services. By building secure and cost-effective private clouds with vSphere and VMware vCloud Director, internal IT organizations can act as true service providers for the businesses they support, driving innovation and agility while increasing IT efficiency and enhancing security. This solution provides a pragmatic path to cloud computing by giving customers the power to leverage existing investments and the flexibility to extend capacity among clouds.

Integrated vShield Edge technologies such as perimeter protection, port-level firewalling, network address translation and DHCP services offer virtualization-aware security, simplify application deployment, and enforce boundaries required by compliance standards in the private cloud. VMware vCenter Chargeback is a software solution that allows IT organizations to gain visibility into the costs of provisioned virtual machines to facilitate planning and decision making. It also enables IT organizations to meter and charge users based on policies.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-director/

VMware vCloud Director Evaluator's Guide

The purpose of this document is to support a self-guided, hands-on evaluation of VMware Cloud Director 1.0. This document is intended to provide IT professionals with the necessary information to stand up a VMware Cloud Director based Cloud in a VMware vSphere environment. This guide will walk you through key use cases for VMware Cloud Director to help you conduct a successful product evaluation.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMW-vCloud-Director-EvalGuide.pdf

When you visit the VMworld Content Catalogue for a full listing of Labs and Breakout Sessions, you will notice that there are some numbers missing. This is because some of the Labs VMware can tell you about right now. Others will be revealed at the conference. After some ID guessing I finally have solved the lab 13 mystery and here it is:

Lab 13: VMware vCloud Director - Install & Config

VMware Cloud Director delivers the Infrastructure as a Service platform of VMware’s vCloud Strategy. This lab will enable you to understand the key components and high level architecture of VMware Cloud Director platform. Understand the system requirements and pre-reqs for a successful installation. Learn the steps to Install and configure VMware vCloud Director for first time use. Finally configure VMware Cloud Director to deliver a simple service offering.