​Cloud Director VDCs come with all the features you’d expect from a public cloud, Virtual Data Center is a logical representation of a physical data center, created using virtualization technologies and a virtual data center allows IT administrators to create, provision, and manage virtualized resources such as servers, storage, and networking in a flexible and efficient manner. Recently released new version of VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 released quite a lot of new features. In this article I want to double click on to external networking…

External Networks

An external network is a network that is external to the VCD infrastructure, such as a physical network or a virtual network, external networks are used to connect virtual machines in VCD with the external world, allowing them to communicate with the Internet or with other networks that are not part of the VCD infrastructure

New Features in Cloud Director 10.4.1 External Networks

With the release of Cloud Director 10.4.1, External networks that are NSX-T Segment backed (VLAN or overlay) can now be connected directly to Org VDC Edge and does not require routed through Tier-0 or VRF the Org VDC Gateway is connected to. This connection is done via the service interface on the service node of the Tier-1 GW that is backing the Org VDC Edge GW. The Org VDC Edge GW still needs a parent Tier-0/VRF although it can be disconnected from it. here are some of the use cases some of the use cases of the external network we are going to discusses…

• Transit connectivity across multiple Org VDC Edge Gateways to route between different Org VDCs
• Routed connectivity via dedicated VLAN to tenant’s co-location physical servers
• Connectivity towards Partner Service Networks
• MPLS connectivity to direct connect while internet is accessible via shared provider gateway

Security VDC Architecture using External Networks (transit connectivity across two Org VDC Edge Gateways)

A Security VDC is a common strategy for connecting multiple VDCs and security VDC become single egress and ingress points as well as can deploy additional firewall etc, in below section i am showing how that can be achieved using new external network feature:

• This is using Overlay (Geneve) backed external network
• ​This Overlay network must be prepared by provider in NSX as well as in Cloud Director
• ​NSX Tier-1 GW does not provide any dynamic routing capabilities, so routing to such network can be configured only via static routes
• ​Tier-1 GW has default route (0.0.0.0/0) always pointing towards its parent Tier-0/VRF GW
• Set default route to the segment backed external network you need to use two more specific routes. For example:
• Ø0.0.0.0/1 next hop <IP> scope <network>
• Ø128.0.0.0/1 next hop <IP> scope <network>

Security VDC Architecture using External Networks – Multi-VDC

1. Log in to the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Admin Portal.
2. From the top navigation bar, select Resources and click Cloud Resources.
3. In the left pane, click External Networks and click New.

On the Backing Type page, select NSX-T Segments and a registered NSX Manager instance to back the network, and click Next.

Enter a name and a description for the new external network

Select an NSX segment from the list to import and click Next. An NSX segment can be backed either by a VLAN transport zone or by an overlay transport zone

1. Configure at least one subnet and click Next.
   1. To add a subnet, click New.
   2. Enter a gateway CIDR.
   3. To enable, select the State checkbox.
   4. Configure a static IP pool by adding at least one IP range or IP address.
   5. Click Save.
   6. (Optional) To add another subnet, repeat steps Step A to Step E.

Review the network settings and click Finish.

Now provider will need to go to tenant org/vdc and add above configured external network in to tenant tier1 edge and offer net new networking configuration and options.

Other Patterns

Routed connectivity via dedicated VLAN to tenant’s co-location physical servers or MPLS

• This is using vLAN backed external network
• ​This vLAN backed network must be prepared by provider in NSX as well as in Cloud Director
• ​NSX Tier-1 GW does not provide any dynamic routing capabilities, so routing to such network can be configured only via static routes
• ​One VLAN segment, it can be connected to only one Org VDC Edge GW
• ​Tier-1 GW has default route (0.0.0.0/0) always pointing towards its parent Tier-0/VRF GW
• Set default route to the segment backed external network. For example:
• Ø172.16.50.0/24 next hop <10.10.10.1> scope <external network>

Connectivity towards Partner Service Networks

• This is using vLAN backed external network
• ​This vLAN backed network must be prepared by provider in NSX as well as in Cloud Director
• ​NSX Tier-1 GW does not provide any dynamic routing capabilities, so routing to such network can be configured only via static routes
• ​One VLAN segment, it can be connected to only one Org VDC Edge GW
• ​Tier-1 GW has default route (0.0.0.0/0) always pointing towards its parent Tier-0/VRF GW
• Set static route to the segment backed external network you need to use two more specific routes. For example:
• Ø<Service Network> next hop <Service Network Router IP> scope <External Network>

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i hope this article helps providers offer net new additional network capabilities to your tenants. please feel free to share feedback.

Service providers can use storage policies in VMware Cloud Director to create a tiered storage offering like: Gold, Silver and Bronze or even offer dedicated storage to tenants. With the enhancement of storage policies to support VMware Cloud Director entities, Now providers has the flexibility to control how tenant use the storage policies. Providers can have not only tiered storage, but isolated storage for running VMs, containers, edge gateways, Catalog and so on.
A common use case that this Cloud Director 10.2.2 update addresses is the need for shared storage across clusters or offering lower cost storage for non-running workloads. For example, instead of having a storage policy with all VMware Cloud Director entities, you can break your storage policy into a “Workload Storage Policy” for all your running VMs and containers, and dedicate a “Catalog Storage Policy” for longer term storage. A slower or low cost NFS option can back the “Catalog Storage Policy”, while the “Workload Storage Policy”  can run on vSAN.

Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.2.2, if Provider do not want a provider VDC storage policy to support certain types of VMware Cloud Director entities, you can edit and limit the list of entities associated with the policy, here is the list of supported entity types:

• Virtual Machines – Used for VMs and vApps and their disks
• VApp/VM Templates – Used for vApp Templates
• Catalog Media – Used for Media inside catalogs
• Named Disks – Used for Named disks
• TKC – Used for TKG Clusters
• Edge Gateways – Used for Edge Gateways

You can limit the entity types that a storage policy supports to one or more types from this list. When you create an entity, only the storage policies that support its type are available.

Use Case – Catalog-Only Storage Policy

There are many use cases of using assignable storage policies, i am demonstrating this one because many of providers has asked this feature in my discussions. so for this use case we will take entity type – Media, VApp Template

Adding Media, VApp Template entity types to a storage policy marks a storage policy as being able to be used with VDC catalogs.These entity types can be added at the PVDC storage policy layer. Storage policies that are associated with datastores that are intended for catalog-only storage can be marked with these entity types, to force only catalog-related items in to catalog only storage datastore.

When added: VCD users will be able to use this storage policy with Media/Templates. In other words, tenants will see this storage policy as an option when pre-provisioning their catalogs on a specific storage policy.

• In Cloud Director provider portal, select Resources and click Cloud Resources.
• select Provider VDCs, and click the name of the target provider virtual data center.
• Under Policies, select Storage
• Click the radio button next to the target storage policy, and click Edit Supported Types.

• From the Supports Entity Types drop-down menu, select Select Specific Entities.
• Select the entities that you want the storage policy to support, and click Save.

Validation

Lets validate this functionality by login as a tenant and go into “Storage Policies” settings and here we can see this Org VDC has two storage Policy assigned by provider.

Now lets deploy a virtual machine in the same org VDC and you can see that policy “WCP” which was marked as catalog only is not available for VM provisioning.

In the same Org VDC lets create a new “Catalog”, here you can see both the policies are visible, one exclusively for “Catalog” and another one which is allowed for all entity types.

Policy Removal: VCD users will not be able to use this storage policy with Media/Templates but whatever is there will continue to be there.

This addition to Cloud Director gives opportunity to providers to manage storage based on entity type , This is the one use case similarly one particular storage can be used for Edge Placement , another one could be used to spin up production grade Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster while default storage can be used by CSE native Kubernetes cluster for development container workloads. This opens up new Monetization opportunities for provider, upgrade your Cloud Director environment and start monetizing.

This Post is also available as Podcast

Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.2.2, Tenants can auto scale applications depending on the current CPU and memory utilization. Depending on predefined criteria for the CPU and memory use, VMware Cloud Director can automatically scale up or down the number of VMs in a selected scale group.

Cloud Director Scale Groups are a new top level object that tenants can use to implement automated horizontal scale-in and scale-out events on a group of workloads. You can configure auto scale groups with:

• A source vApp template
• A load balancer network
• A set of rules for growing or shrinking the group based on the CPU and memory use

VMware Cloud Director automatically spins up or shuts down VMs in a scaling group based on above three settings.This blog post will help you to enable Scale Goups in Cloud Director and also we will configure Scale Groups.

Configure Auto Scale

Login to Cloud Director 10.2.2 cell with admin/root credential and eanble metric data collection and publishing by setting up the metrics collection in a Cassandra database or collect metrics without metrics data persistence. in this post we are going to configure without metrics data persistence, to collect metrics data without data persistence, run the following commands:

#/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool manage-config -n statsFeeder.metrics.collect.only -v true 

#/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool manage-config -n statsFeeder.metrics.publishing.enabled -v true

Now the second step is to create a file named “metrics.groovy” file in the /tmp folder of cloud director appliance with the following contents:

configuration {
    metric("cpu.ready.summation") {
        currentInterval=20
        historicInterval=20
        entity="VM"
        instance=""
        minReportingInterval=300
        aggregator="AVERAGE"
    }
}

Change the file permission appropriatly and import the file using below command:

$VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool configure-metrics --metrics-config /tmp/metrics.groovy

Lets enable auto scalling plugin by running below commands on Cloud Director Cell:

$VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool configure-autoscale --set enabled=true
$VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool configure-autoscale --set username=<username> (should having admin priveldge account)
$VCLOUD_HOME/bin/cell-management-tool configure-autoscale --encrypt --set password=<password> ( Password for the above account)

If you see in the Cloud Director provider console, under customize portal , there will be a plugin which provider can enable to tenants who needs auto scale functionality for the applications or can be made available to all tenants.

Since Auto Scale released with VMware Cloud Director 10.2.2, which allows service providers to grant tenant rights to create scale groups.Under Tenant Access Control, select Rights Bundles and then select the “vmware:scalegroup Entitlement” bundle, and click Publish.

Also ensure provider Add the necessary VMWARE:SCALEGROUP rights to the tenant roles that want to use scale groups.

Tenant Self Serive

On the Tenant portal after login, select Applications and select the Scale Groups tab and Click New Scale Group.

Select an organization VDC in which tenant want to create the scale group.

Or Tenant can also access scale groups from a selected organization virtual data center (VDC) by going in to specific organization VDC

• Enter a name and a description of the new scale group.
• Select the minimum and maximum number of VMs to which you want the group to scale and click Next.

Select a VM template for the VMs in the scale group and a storage policy, and click Next. Template needs to be pre-populated in catalog by tenant or can be by provider and published for tenants.

Next step is to select a network for the scale group.If Tenants oVDC is backed by NSX-T Data Center and NSX ALB (AVI) has been published as a load balancer by provider, then tenant can choose NSX ALB load Balancer edge on which load balacing has been enabled and Server pool has been setup by tenant before enabling Scale Groups.

If tenant want to manage the load balancer on your own or if there is no need for a load balancer, thenn select I have a fully set-up network, Auto Scale will automatically adds VM to this network.

VMware Cloud Director starts the initial expansion of the scale group to reach the minimum number of VMs, besically it will start creating a VM from template that tenant selected while creating scale group and it will continue to spin up to minimum number VM spacified in the scale group section.

Add an Auto Scaling Rule

1. Click Add Rule.
2. Enter a name for the rule.
3. Select whether the scale group must expand or shrink when the rule takes effect.
4. Select the number of VMs by which you want the group to expand or shrink when the rule takes effect.
5. Enter a cooldown period in minutes after each auto scale in the group.The conditions cannot trigger another scaling until the cooldown period expires and cooldown period resets when any of the rules of the scale group takes effect.
6. Add a condition that triggers the rule.The duration period is the time for which the condition must be valid to trigger the rule. To trigger the rule, all conditions must be met.
7. To add another condition, click Add Condition. tenant can add multiple conditions.
8. Click Add.

From the details view of a scale group, when you select Monitor, you can see all tasks related to this scale group. For example, you can see the time of creation of the scale group, all growing or shrinking tasks for the group, the rules that initiated the tasks, in side Virtual Machine section which VM has been created at what time and what is the IP address of the VM etc…

here is the section showing scale takes which trigered and its status.

Virtual Machine section as said provides scale group VM information anf its details.

here is the another section showing scale takes which trigered and thier status , start time and completion time.

Auto Scale Group in Cloud Director 10.2.2 brings very important functionality nativily to cloud director which does not require any external configuration like vRealize Orchestrator or vRops and does not incure addional cost to tenant or provider. go ahead uprade your cloud director , enable it and let the tenant enjoy this cool functionality.