This Wednesday at 10.30pm GMT (5:30PM Eastern time) join Chris Colotti and I for a vCloud Brown Bag session on with VMware Professional. We will be discussing the following topics and we will have access to Chris’s lab for some limited show and tell. vCloud “Eco-System” of Components All the possible building blocks Importance of Orchestration and knowledge depth Solution in Practice Based on vCAT 2.0 Published Catalog vApp Cloning Based on 3-part “clone wars” blog posts Open Q&A on anything vCloud Register by clicking here
Archive | Cloud Computing
All blog posts under this category are related to Cloud Computing.
vCloud Ecosystem components explained
During VMworld Chris Colotti and I presented quite a few group discussions on VMware vCloud. During these discussions some people were amazed to find out how many components/products are involved in making up the vCloud environment. When planning on building a VMware vCloud, you are not just installing vCloud Director and pointing it to vSphere, you are designing/building a whole Ecosystem. The list below shows which components are used in building a full vCloud environment. They are listed in order of priority. vSphere ESXi vCenter vCloud Director vShield Manager vCenter Chargeback Vcenter Update Manager vCenter Orchestrator vCloud Service Manager vCloud Connector So why are these components important? When designing a vCloud environment, you need to take into consideration the availability of certain components, like vCenter for example. This is no longer a management tool that is used to manage your virtual infrastructure. This is a critical component of your vCloud […]
Top 9 new vCloud Director 1.5 features
During the VMworld sessions that Chris Colotti and I present the private vCloud architecture deep dive, we cover the top 9 new vCloud features included in version 1.5. Now I know vCD 1.5 was released a little while ago, but not everyone is aware of all the new features, so I thought I would list them here. As a small annecdote Chris and I came up with this list late one night in Vegas before our session. We had planned on listing the top 10, but could only manage our top 9 🙂 Microsoft SQL Database Support vShield Edge VPN and Static Routing support vShield Edge 5-Tupple Firewall API Call-outs with blocking messaging Elastic Virtual Datacenter Fast Provisioning vSphere 5 Support Custom Guest Properties Third Party VLAN Backed and VCD-NI
Cannot add groups to vCD after configuring LDAP
I discovered today building a new vCD 1.5 home lab, that once you configure the System LDAP, you dont have the option to add any LDAP groups. This confused me, it was possible to do this in 1.0.x. Why isn’t it available in 1.5? What I discovered is that the GUI is still configured for non LDAP authentication. Once you have configured LDAP and started the synchronization log out of the vCloud Director GUI and back in. You will then see that groups is listed under the administration tab. The GUI needs to update its configuration options. Simple solution, but still confusing until you realise.
VMware vCloud Director 1.5 release notes
Lots of people have asked me where they can find information on the new features and the release notes for vCloud Director 1.5. To view the release notes click here. Quick abstract from the page What’s in the Release Notes The release notes cover the following topics: What’s New System Requirements and Installation Known Issues What’s New Fast Provisioning: Utilizing linked clones dramatically speeds up provisioning time and reduces storage costs. vApp Custom Properties: Allows developers and other users to easily pass user data into guest OSes using OVF descriptors. Blocking Tasks and Notifications: Programmatically connect vCloud Director to enterprise systems (e.g. CMDB) enabling end-to-end system automation. 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. Microsoft SQL Server Support: For new deployments of vCloud Director, Microsoft SQL is supported for the vCloud database […]