This is a multi-part blog series on some of the frequently asked questions and scenarios for the vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+ Cloud Services. What started out as a single blog post that attempted to summarize some of the learnings and notes that I have made while answering various questions from our field and customers for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+ quickly turned into a 3K+ word blog post and counting! 😅
While I thought it would be easier from a search perspective to have everything in a single blog post, I decided to take the advice from the community and actually break it up into small blogs which would be part of a large multi-part blog series, in no particular order but I recommend reading it in the following logical order as shown below:
- Frequently asked scenarios about vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+
- Frequently asked scenarios about vCenter Lifecycle Management for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+
- Frequently asked scenarios about vCenter Desired State Configuration for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+
- Frequently asked scenarios about VM Provisioning & Management for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+
- Frequently asked scenarios about Cloud Consumption Interface (CCI) for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+
- Frequently asked scenarios about Global Inventory for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+ (THIS BLOG POST)
- Frequently asked scenarios about Subscription & Entitlement for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+
Global Inventory
For as long as I can remember, there has always been a desire from customers to have a holistic view for all of their VMware infrastructure deployments (vSphere-based) and the use cases were truly infinite from reporting, monitoring, workload provisioning, resource management, configuration, security, compliance and the list just goes on and on.
Over the years, there have been numerous solutions from Windows Linked Mode (ADAM), vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO), Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM), Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) and SDDC Linking (SDDC Groups) that have tried to solve a subset of these problems, but ultimately has lead to more complexity for our users to consume as each solution was unique in both its capabilities as well as their constraints, which would impact things like interoperability across releases.
This is why I am personally excited for what the VMware Cloud console can be for our customers over time, not just for a place to view your infrastructure deployments but truly solve and enable many of the high value use cases that our users have been asking for over the years. While some aspects of global inventory (vCenter Server, SDDC Manager including Management and Workload Domain and VMs) is already available today within the VMC Console, it currently does not cover the breadth of details that you would find when connecting directly to a vCenter Server or SDDC manager.
In addition, some of the rich features that is provided by some of these solutions like ELM, which is commonly used to provide synchronization of vSphere Tags across multiple vCenter Server(s) will continue to function in the foreseeable future and users should continue to leverage these solutions for their benefits. Overtime, we will build on top of this global inventory foundation in the VMC Console and start to incorporate the various capabilities from some of these earlier solutions so customers get a consistent management experience using the VMC Console for all their VMware infrastructure deployments, regardless of location and versions.
For now, existing users will continue to leverage both the vCenter Server and SDDC Manager (UI and API) interfaces for many of the day to day operations as well as Automation, especially if you are using 2nd party or 3rd party Automation (PowerCLI, Terraform, etc) tools for management and operations.
Here are some additional resources related to VM provisioning that might be of interests:
- Using and Managing vSphere+
- Quick Tip - Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), IP Address Range & Source Domain restrictions available for all VMware Cloud Services
TomasF says
As you say, we've been wanting this for years, and we'll still be left wanting this. Because especially those of us outside the US will be needing this... on premise.