This is a quick article to document vCloud Connector interoperability and the supported versions of vSphere and vCloud Director. I am not one for trawling through Installation documents to find a simple support matrix showing which versions it supports, so thought I would post this extremely quick article. vCloud Connector Interoperability Matrix Product Version vSphere 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 vCloud Director 1.5, 5.1, 5.5 vShield Manager (vCNS) 5.1.2, 5.5 vSphere Client 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 This table was originally sourced from the vCloud Connector installation guide. Click here to read.
Archive | Cloud Computing
All blog posts under this category are related to Cloud Computing.

How vCloud Director constructs map to vCloud Automation Center
As most people know, I have been working with vCloud Director since its beta days. My mind thinks of cloud in easy bite site chunks of Virtual Data Centre and Organisations. I have now been spending a lot of my time and focus on vCloud Automation Center, but still always find myself thinking about the vCloud Director constructs and how they map over to vCloud Automation Center. In vCloud Director I have listed the most common constructs that are seen every day. Provider VDC Organisation VDC Organisation vApp Catalog vCenter Server Cluster or Resource Pool We all know and love these constructs, and know how they fit together. I created the diagram below to help me understand where I need to go in vCAC to create the same object. For example, if I wanted to essentially create an Organisation in vCloud Automation Center, where would I create this? The organisation […]

General Availability vCloud Director 5.5
VMware vCloud Director 5.5 has now been released for general availability. There are a number of new features in this release that will help customers deliver better cloud environments and they should consider upgrading to this release. Catalog Publish and Subscribe – vCloud Director 5.5 introduces the ability to publish catalogs, allowing them to be shared with external vCloud Director instances. Published catalogs can also be password protected for additional security. Once published, catalogs can be subscribed to by remote vCloud Director instances. When a catalog is subscribed to the vApp templates and media files are copied from the publisher to the subscriber where they are made available, in a read-only capacity, to organizations at the remote location. Limit Access to Shared Catalogs – with vCloud Director 5.5 you can now limit the organizations that are allowed to access shared catalogs. This provides added security by enabling organizational admins to […]

VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit – vCAT Book released
I am pleased to announce that my first book I co-authored has been released on Amazon. This is really exciting news, which I am extremely pleased about. The book is titled VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT): Technical and Operational Guidance for Cloud Success. This has been quite a long journey for a lot of us, and we have spent many a long hour writing or editing for this book, and the paper version available on vmware.com. The vCAT book synopsis: The complete vCAT printed reference: knowledge, tools, and validated designs for building high-value vCloud® solutions The vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT) brings together validated designs, tools, and knowledge for architecting, implementing, operating, and consuming modern vCloud infrastructure based on the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC). vCAT has already helped hundreds of VMware customers succeed with vCloud. Now, pioneering VMware architect John Arrasjid has integrated essential vCAT information into a definitive printed […]

Affected by the Allocation Pool changes in VCD 5.1.x? Change it back
Have you been affected by the Allocation Pool changes in VCD 5.1 when you upgraded? If you have been, and are looking for a way to make this allocation model the same as in VCD 1.5, VMware has included a feature in VCD 5.1.2 that allows you to change it back to the original way it was conceived. First lets look at the changes in the Allocation Pool. Massimo ReFerre has written a great article showing the differences between the two versions of the allocation model http://it20.info/2012/10/vcloud-director-5-1-1-changes-in-resource-entitlements/ In this article he provides a comparison chart for you to easily see the differences, and gives a nice review of allocation models at the end of the article. OK but what does all this mean for me? As I am sure you are more confused than when you started reading this post… perhaps it makes sense to put a stake in the ground […]