vCloud Director - 1

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.

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.
  
  

VMware vCloud Director 5.1 Performance and Best Practices

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

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.

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.




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

John Coley over at StratoGen is looking beta testers that can really push their new platform to the limits. In particular he's looking for power users familiar with building complex environments using VPNs, inter-vApp networking and SAN storage. StratoGen are pleased to announce the start of their VCD beta program which will provide valuable feedback on our implementation of the next version of VMware vCloud Director. 

Beta testing underpins all of their product launches and is crucial in our ability to provide services that lead the hosted VMware market whilst remaining highly resilient. In this program they are particularly interested in working with experienced “power users” who are familiar with VPNs, complex internetworking and able to utilize SAN storage. 

By participating in this program you agree to be contacted to provide feedback on usability and platform performance. In return you will be one of the first to use this exciting new technology, and allocated temporary resources on our USA based enterprise platform.

If you would like to take part in the program please visit this link and follow the link for the Beta program to register your interest.

VMware has released a new training course. This three days of instructor-led training course is designed to guide students through the decision points and policy choices available for designing and implementing a VMware vCloud environment. Students will learn to appreciate the effects of design choices in VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Director, VMware vCenter Chargeback, and the VMware vShield Edge capability that is included with vCloud Director. The course culminates in a comprehensive workshop on VMware cloud design. By the end of the course, you should have an understanding of the VMware cloud and be able to do the following: 

• Evaluate and design a multitenant environment to address both private cloud and public cloud customer needs.
• Configure vCloud providers that can accommodate heterogeneous server, storage, and network resources. 
• Design a network infrastructure optimized for vCloud. 
• Integrate vCloud Director security with existing LDAP systems and design appropriate security hierarchies with security roles. 
• Design a vCenter Chargeback implementation.
  
  

In general, VMware recommends that the number of vCloud Director cell instances = n + 1, where n is the number of vCenter Server instances providing compute resources for cloud consumption. Based on the Service Definition, two vCloud Director cell instances should be sufficient and allow for upgradability (upgrading one vCloud Director cell, then the other) and high availability.

It is important for vCloud Director to be able to spread and run services in case of hardware failures and load balance them on available cells as best as it can. This article describes how the Kemp Loadmaster is able to balance client connections to the vCloud Director portal and ensures a highly available multi cell deployment by monitoring services an response times.

The Console Proxy and web portal are running on every cell and are stateless. All instances are capable of doing work so failure of any one component does not affect user requests as they are redirected by the load balancer. In a one-armed configuration, the Virtual Servers and the VDC cells are configured on the same subnet. The LoadMaster connects to the Layer 2 network through a single interface, eth0. This architecture covers load balancing of multiple vCloud Director sells within the same site. 

The Loadmaster service should be configured to check the health and response time of the individual vCloud Director cells. Since each cell responds via HTTPS, this can be configured quickly via the IP and API end point URL. Generally services are checked every few-30 seconds based on load. A good starting point is 5 seconds. Example GUI URL - https://my.cloud.com/cloud/

Viktor van den Berg over at viktorious.nl has written an extensive article about load balancing vCloud Director cells with pfSense -  vCloud Director Howto: Load balancing with free pfSense