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VMware Cloud (VMC) Console Inventory with various vSphere "Linked Modes"

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While I have covered a number of popular topics across our vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+ Cloud Service in my recent 7-part blog series, which I definitely recommend folks check out first, direct links below:

One reoccurring theme that has come up and for good reasons is what users would see in the VMware Cloud (VMC) Console as it pertains to the different types of vSphere-based deployments from vSphere+, VCF+ and VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC-A), especially when incorporating the different "Linked Mode" configurations that are supported today?

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Finding vCenter Cloud Gateway Deployments in your environment

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After publishing my recent article on how to audit vCenter Cloud Gateway and vCenter Server registrations for the vSphere+ Cloud Service, I thought it would also be useful to share some tips on how you can easily find your existing vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) deployment(s) within your environment?

You might wonder, do I not already know about my VCGW deployment(s) or for that matter any other solution that is deployed within my own infrastructure? Yes, that would ideally be the case and you should also be able to look that up in your change management database (CMDB). However, over the years in speaking to many customers and hearing about some of the requests from our field teams, I have come to learn that this nirvana state does not exist for many of our customers.

In some organizations, it has been described as the wild wild west where teams of administrators with access to their vSphere environment can deploy any number of solution without ever communicating amongst each other to organizations that provide shared infrastructure access to other small teams and/or companies with a simliar set of challenges. Net net, it is certainly possible that solutions like the VCGW gateway may have been deployed or potentially even retired but have not been removed from your environment.

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Logging into vCenter when vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) is disconnected from vSphere+ Cloud Service

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As part of setting up access to the vSphere+ / vSAN+ Cloud Service, a vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) is deployed into your on-premises infrastructure and serves as a gateway between your vCenter Server(s) and the VMware Cloud Console.

If the VCGW has connectivity issues to the VMware Cloud Console for whatever reason, your infrastructure and workloads continue to run but you will not be able to perform any operations through the VMware Cloud Console until connectivity is restored.

UPDATE (06/21/23) - The period in which VMware declares a VCGW unreachable has been updated from 24hrs to 7 days. This means even if your VCGW loses connectivity, you will still be able to login to your on-premises vCenter Server and/or SDDC Manager without needing to go to emergency URL.

However, if you attempt to login into your on-premises vCenter Server(s) using the vSphere UI, you may be surprised to find the following error message.


The message may looking alarming at first about not being able to login, but can still login even if connectivity between the VCGW and VMware Cloud Console has been lost.

While I will agree the user experience may not very intuitive, the hint is in the URL link below where it says "Still having connection problems?"

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