VMware Cloud Director 10.1 has just been released and ready for you to try! As we have got used to in the past few releases of vCloud Director, the amount of features added in each new release is substantial even in minor releases. VMware Cloud Director 10.1 is no different and comes with plenty of features than our Cloud Providers will be thrilled with.

As a start, you might have noticed the name change. vCloud Director has gone under a huge rebranding and is now called VMware Cloud Director, as our Cloud Director Service across the hyperscalers is on its way as well. While some of our documentations might take some time to get updated and where you might still find some old references on the web of it being called vCloud Director, going forward it will be named VMware Cloud Director. Please welcome “VMware Cloud Director”, as it brought a huge amount of features with it.

App Launchpad

Many of our Cloud Providers had often asked about adding applications market place to our Cloud Director Portal in the past. Now with App Launchpad they get a very modern looking market place within the Cloud Director portal, where they can publish applications from different sources including Bitnami Community Catalog VM images, ISV apps, and even in-house developed applications.… Read More

Product Versions Deployed with Cloud Provider Pod had been updated to include vCloud Director 10.0. Below is the full Version changes:

• VMware ESXi and vCenter Server are updated to 6.7 Update 3
• VMware NSX for vSphere is updated to 6.4.6
• VMware vCloud Director is updated to 10
• VMware vRealize Network Insight is updated to 5.0
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager is updated to 8.0
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager Multi-Tenant App is updated to 2.3
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager for NSX 
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager – Cloud Pod Management Pack is updated to 3.0

·  You must get a new deployment guide from the Cloud Provider Pod designer and follow the instructions included in it. The instructions are changed, now you must manually upload the products.json in the Cloud Provider Pod appliance to get the new product versions.

·  There is a critical fix in the Drivers and Tools section of the Cloud Provider Pod page to resolve an issue with the download of required deployment software. See the known issues for more details.

As there is plenty of improvements and new features in vCloud Director 10.0, if you were waiting to stand up your setup with CPOD, now you can do it with vCloud Director 10.0… Read More

For those who were following VMware vCloud Director Evolution lately, it has been developing quite fast and new features have been added continuously at a none matched speed. The development vCloud Director had over the past couple of years just amaze me as has surpassed what was delivered in 6 years development cycle previously.

vCloud Director 10.0 is here! Below is a summary of what it’s bringing to the table. Tons of great features and enhancement and more to come as we progress.

Modernizing Cloud Operations and Improving Core Efficiency

• VCD as Central Point of Management: added Admin and Tenant UI, listing of vCenter inventory
• Events API
• VCD Appliance: Enhancements in migration, HA, certificate mgmt. These are very important for those who are keen to move to the vCD Appliance which is the direction where vCloud Director is going in the future.
• VRO Plugin: Enable Multi-tenancy in VRO plugin and VRO cluster support. This will take vCD extensibility to the next level.
• Enhanced support for VM storage placement with SDRS: added support for intra-SPOD placement; improved support for: inter-SPOD placement, datastore + SPOD hybrid placement, named disks and linked clones’ placement
• Upgrading the appliance using the default VMware repository
• Template based deployments, New Template Repository.

Great news, VMware Cloud Provider Pod 1.1 has been released on January 31, 2019. Now the new release include a more recent versions of VMware Cloud Provider stack as below:

• vSphere 6.7u1
• vSAN 6.7u1
• NSX 6.4.4
• vCloud Director 9.5.0.1
• vCloud Director Extender 1.1.0.2
• vRealize Orchestrator 7.5
• vRealize Operations 7.0, including Multi-Tenant App 2.0
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager – Cloud Pod Management Pack
• vRealize Log Insight 4.7
• vRealize Network Insight 4.0
• Usage Meter 3.6.1

You can download the VMware Cloud Provider Pod 1.1 at: Download Landing Page

For more information you can check the release notes at: Release Notes,  documentation link at: Documentation and the following blog post: https://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/2019/01/cloud-provider-pod-1-1-is-out-now.html… Read More

I have a Cloud Provider involving me lately, as they kept getting the error below every time they tried to create an External Network in vCloud Director 9.5.

“Gateway cannot be equal to the network definition”

It was an interesting error message especially in my customer case, where they were confident of providing the right information.  It was a very small mistake that can be easily missed by others. When the above error happened, they were not using the correct Network CIDR. My customer was using 192.168.1.0/24 where he should have been using 192.168.1.1/24. Changing the CIDR to the correct one as below fixed the issue! As it was one of those simple things that others can miss, I thought I will share!

… Read More

Although vCloud Director 9.1 is released less than 6 months after vCloud Director 9.0, it is packed with tons of enhancements and new features. It is hard to believe it is just a minor release. Below is a recap of the top feature of the vCD 9.0 release:

HTML 5 Tenant Portal Enhancement.

While in vCD 9.0 the well received HTML 5 Tenant Portal was introduced, in vCloud Director 9.1 it got enhanced to include enchanced monitoring dashboard, vAPP, and Catalog deployment and management. These enhancemed to the HTML 5 interface has gotten it much closer to parity with the Flex interface and will make it ready for prime time.

HTML5 Administration Portal

VMware vCloud Director 9.1 includes a dedicated HTML 5 provider portal where administrators of the IaaS environment can manage all the system resources and configurations of vCloud Director from an easy to access web portal. The Flex portal will still be available for more advance and indepth configuration while the HTML5 interface get in parity with the Flex interface.

Standalone VMRC & OVF/OVA Upload

Previous verions of vCloud Director has required a web browser plugin called vCloud Director Client Integration Plugin to be installed to Upload OFV/OVA as well to access VMRC.… Read More

I have been asked repeatedly lately on how to get the vCloud Director Client Integration Plugin (CIP) working. I wanted to put this post out there to help you getting it working in no time. It is important to note that, the Client Integration Plugin (CIP) is only needed in vCD to carry out import and export of templates and media images.

To improve system security in vCD 8.20 and higher, the vCloud Director Client Integration Plug-In (CIP) is no longer bundled with the vCloud Director server installation. It must be downloaded from vmware.com. When you initiate any operation that requires this plug-in, the vCloud Director Web Console verifies that an appropriate version of the plug-in is installed in your browser, and prompts you to download and install a newer version if necessary.

Ok, first step first, before panicing and starting with the troubleshooting steps below, please start by ensuring you are using a supported browser. If you are using a browser that is not on the supported browsers list,  then you need to shift to a supported one before trying anything else. Remember we have these support matrix for a reason.  Below is a list of vCD 9.0 supported browsers:

The vCloud Director Client Integration Plug-in is compatible with recent versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer.… Read More

vCloud Availability 2.0 is available for download today here. vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 delivers the following key enhancements:

• • vSphere 6.5 Support: Added support for vSphere 6.5 on the service provider side. This was missing in the previous release and many service providers were looking for it. The supported vSphere versions on the tenant side remain unchanged. For more interoperability and compatibility information about vCloud Availability for vCloud Director, see the Interoperability Pages for vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0. Here is a screenshot of what the interoperability matrix look like.

• • 5-minutes Recovery Point Objective (RPO): vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 delivers an enhanced RPO support of 5-minutes compared to the previously supported RPO of 15 minutes.

• • Enhancements to vCloud Availability for vCloud Director Service Manager Portal: The Service Manager Portal, introduced in the vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 1.0.1.2 release, allows service providers to monitor and manage their DR environments. The current release includes usability and performance enhancements to improve the response time on the Inventory page and a new Tenant Impersonation feature. The new feature allows service providers to act as tenant users. Using the Tenant Impersonation feature, service providers can filter tenant organizations and perform DR operations using a tenant role, the same way a tenant user would.

VMware Cloud Availability (vCAv) is a solution provided by VMware to Service Providers to offer DRaaS with VMware Cloud Director(vCD) as a target.

Two features that makes VMware vCloud Availability valuable to service providers are:

• It support multi-tenancy out of the box: This means the Service Provider will not have to acquire a separate hardware and setup an isolated vSphere environment per client, which end up improving the TCO and ROI for both the Service Provider and their customers.
• The vCenter/vSphere versions do not have to match between the service Provider and the Tenant. This is big as the service provider will have the liberty to board customers running a different version of vSphere and vCenter without having to impact the version they run on premise.

A question I am often asked lately when talking about VMware Cloud Availability is: Does the on premise environment of vSphere/vCenter have to match the versions used by the service provider and if not what versions are compatible? The short answer is no, for more info on the supported versions, look below.

Provider Versions

While vCD 8.20 and vSphere/vCenter 6.5 is recommended below is the different versions supported for the Service provider.

• vCD 8.10, 8.10.1