vCloud Director - Eric Sloof

Tuesday, January 7. 2014

Download vCloud Hybrid Service vSphere Client Plug-in

The vCloud Hybrid Service plug-in lets you view and manage your vCloud Hybrid Service resources in the vSphere Web Client. It provides another user interface for vCloud Hybrid Service, one that lets you manage your public cloud resources from an on-premise application.

After you install the plug-in and register your vCloud Hybrid Service account with it, you can view all your Dedicated Cloud and Virtual Private Cloud instances from all regions. You can browse each cloud instance and manage its inventory of virtual data centers, virtual machines, gateways, networks, and templates. You can create new virtual data centers (in Dedicated Cloud instances), and manage gateways and networks.

You can create new virtual machines from the templates in your vCloud Hybrid Service catalogs, connect them to networks, and manage them from the plug-in. With the vCloud Hybrid Service plug-in installed in the vSphere Web Client, you also get a single pane of glass to manage both your on-premise data center and your public, vCloud Hybrid Service resources.

Key features of the vCloud Hybrid Service plug-in include the following:

The ability to set up your entire vCloud Hybrid Service environment, in the same way that you set it up in the vCloud Hybrid Service portal after you purchase resources.
Synchronization between the vCloud Hybrid Service plug-in and portal
Integrated task management - Tasks for commands that you perform in the vCloud Hybrid Service portal (with the same user name) appear in the Tasks panel in the vSphere Web Client along with tasks that you perform in the plug-in.
Access to the vCloud Hybrid Service portal - From the plug-in, you can use the Manage in vCloud Hybrid Service Portal link to access the vCloud Hybrid Service portal. You can log in to the portal to perform tasks that are unavailable in the plug-in.
Single sign-on to vCloud Director - From the plug-in, you can use the Manage in vCloud Director UI link to access the vCloud Director instance underlying your cloud instance. You can use vCloud Director to perform advanced administrative tasks.

Download vCloud Hybrid Service vSphere Client Plug-in

Monday, February 4. 2013

vCloud Connector 2.0 Now Available

vCloud Connector is an enterprise product that provides a single user interface for overseeing multiple public and private clouds and for transferring cloud content from one cloud to another. It allows you to connect multiple clouds, both internal and external, in a single user interface.

Using vCloud Connector, you can stop and start virtual machines, check their performance, and transfer virtual machines, vApps, and templates from one cloud to another.

Using vCloud Connector Advanced edition, you can also extend your private datacenter to a public vCloud and set up a Content Library to distribute and synchronize templates across clouds.

Datacenter Extension - Enables you to extend your private datacenter to a public vCloud. You can move virtual machines and vApps from your private datacenter to a public vCloud, retain their original network settings, and continue to use them as if they were still in your private datacenter. You use the Datacenter Extension feature through the Stretch Deploy command in vCloud Connector.

Content Sync - Enables you to synchronize templates across clouds. You can publish a folder or catalog of templates to a Content Library, have users subscribe to it, and keep the templates synchronized for all subscribed users.

Cross-cloud Search - Enables you to search for a virtual machine, vApp, or template across all the clouds that you have added to your vCloud Connector installation.

Multi-tenant Node - Enables public vCloud Service Providers or system administrators of private vCloud Director clouds to install one vCloud Connector Node for the cloud. Multiple organizations on the cloud can use that Node.

Copy and deploy in one operation - Provides the ability to copy and deploy in one step, as well as the option of using the commands separately.

New User Interface - Includes new Copy and Deploy wizards, new interface for Tasks, Details panel, and new cross-cloud search, among others.

Download VMware vCloud Connector 2.0

VMware vCloud Connector Release Notes

Wednesday, January 30. 2013

New Technical White Paper - VMware vCloud Director 5.1 Performance and Best Practices

VMware vCloud Director 5.1 gives enterprise organizations the ability to build secure private clouds that dramatically increase datacenter efficiency and business agility. Coupled with VMware vSphere®, vCloud Director delivers cloud computing for existing datacenters by pooling virtual infrastructure resources and delivering them to users as catalog-based services. vCloud Director 5.1 helps you build agile infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud environments that greatly accelerate the time-to-market for applications and responsiveness of IT organizations.

This white paper addresses three areas regarding vCloud Director performance:

vCloud Director sizing guidelines and software requirements
Best practices in performance and tuning vCloud Director Architecture
Performance characterization and best practices for key vCloud Director operations and new features

Figure 1 shows the deployment architecture for vCloud Director. A user accesses vCloud Director through a Web browser or REST API. Multiple vCloud Director Server instances can be deployed with a shared database, and both Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases are supported.

A vCloud Director Server instance connects to one or multiple VMware vCenter Servers. From now on, we use vCloud Director Server instance and cell interchangeably.

VMware vCloud Director 5.1 Performance and Best Practices

Friday, January 25. 2013

Mike Laverick's Chinwag with Eric Sloof

After the course was over I was able to do an impromptu chinwag from the back of class with the man and legend - talking about vCloud Director, the challenges of design and the stuff that Eric would like to see VMware do next with vCloud Director. <- Read the full story at Mike Laverick's Blog

Friday, September 14. 2012

What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 5.1 - Snapshots, Storage Profiles and the Elastic vDC

VMware vCloud Director orchestrates the provisioning of software-defned datacenter services, to deliver complete virtual datacenters for easy consumption in minutes. Software-defned datacenter services and virtual datacenters fundamentally simplify infrastructure provisioning and enable IT to move at the speed of business.

Numerous enhancements are included within vCloud Director 5.1, making it the best infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution in the marketplace today. This document highlights some of these key enhancements and is targeted toward users who are familiar with previous vCloud Director releases.

This presentation will show you what has changed in: Snapshots, Storage Profiles and the Elastic vDC.

Technical White Paper - What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 5.1

Monday, August 27. 2012

Technical White Paper - What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 5.1

VMware vCloud Director orchestrates the provisioning of software-defined datacenter services, to deliver complete virtual datacenters for easy consumption in minutes. Software-defined datacenter services and virtual datacenters fundamentally simplify infrastructure provisioning and enable IT to move at the speed of business.

Technical White Paper - What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 5.1.pdf

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