Yesterday VMware released an update to vCloud Director. Listed below you will see some of the new features: Firewall rules can be configured with CIDR blocks, IP ranges, and port ranges Added system notification for lost connection to AMQP host Enhanced cell management tool and log collection script Support for AES-256 encryption for VPN tunnels Increased the retention maximum for vCenter Chargeback history The new release also supports the latest vSphere releases vCenter Server 5.0 Update 1 ESXi 5.0 Update 1 vShield 5.0.1 To read the full release notes, click here You can download the latest vCloud Director binaries by clicking here
VMware vCloud Director 101 – Networking – Part 4
This is part 4 of the vCloud Director 101 posts I have recently been writing. This article covers the vCloud Director Networking concepts and how they fit together. You can read the previous posts by clicking here. To understand some of the terms contained within this post, you need to read the first post that discuses the terms “consumers” and “providers”. We will be using these terms regularly throughout this article. vCloud Director network layers We will start by discussing the three different networking layers. These are: External Networks Organization Networks vApp Networks These networks are managed at two different layers: Consumers and Providers. External Networks and Organization Networks are created and managed by the Cloud Admins or Providers, where as vApp Networks are created and managed by the users or consumers of vCloud Director. So what is an External Network? A Network that is external to VMware vCloud Director […]
Auto Deploy GUI fling
Back in February Max Daneri released his Auto Deploy GUI fling. This builds on the success of his PXE Manager fling released last year. Lots of other blogs have already reported this fling, but I have been asked three times this week where they can download it from. I will be writing a blog post soon on how to actually use this fling, much the same way I did with Max’s PXE Manager. Auto Deploy GUI is a front end interface to the Auto Deploy/Stateless infrastructure. Features The Auto Deploy GUI is a vSphere plug-in for the VMware vSphere Auto Deploy component. The GUI plug-in allows a user to easily manage the setup and deployment requirements in a stateless environment managed by Auto Deploy. Some of the features provided through the GUI include the ability to add/remove Depots, list/create/modify Image Profiles, list VIB details, create/modify rules to map hosts to […]
VMware vCloud Director 101 – Concepts – Allocation Models – Part 3
This is part 3 of the VMware vCloud Director 101 blog posts I am writing. Part 1 I explained some of the basic principles of vCloud director, and Part 2 covers the Virtual Data Center concepts. Within Part 3 and Part 4 we are going to discuss some more of the concepts and constructs within vCloud Director. As with Part 2 this may cover some of the definitions you may already have heard of, like Reservation Pool or Pay-as-you-Go allocation models. Part 4 will then discuss vCloud Director Networking concepts. So lets jump straight in and start discussing Allocation Models. What are Allocation Models? Listed below is the definitions and usage of Allocation Models: Definition Allocation Models define how resources are allocated to an organisation. Allocation is actually the creation of a child resource pool to the provider vDC object (cluster or resource) in vSphere. Usage Allocation Models are chosen […]
vCloud Director Infrastructure Resiliency white paper released
Today Duncan Epping at Yellow-Bricks.com and Chris Colotti at ChrisColotti.us released the VMware vCloud Infrastructure Resiliency case study. Duncan has already blogged about this. He explained how he came up with this idea, and the following quote is from his article: Someone asked me at PEX where this solution came from all of a sudden, well this is based on a solution I came up with on a random Friday morning half of December when I woke up at 05:00 in Palo Alto still jet-lagged. I diagrammed it on a napkin and started scribbling things down in Evernote. I explained the concept to Chris over breakfast and that is how it started. Over the last two months Chris (+ his team) and I validated the solution and this is the outcome. I want to thank Chris and team for their hard work and dedication. After Duncan’s story ends, it actually continues […]