Great to see how VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is growing rapidly and helping thousands of customers to offer all the benefits of public cloud, in an on-premises deployment. Helping customers to have unified architecture across On-prem or Public Cloud in their Multi Cloud journey.
Shout Out to #VMware and #VCF Team for releasing 4.3.1 within a month with one of the most exciting and awaited support for in-place migration from VMware Cloud Foundation 3.10.1.2+ to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3.1.
I know many customers was waiting for this in-place migration to move from VCF 3.9/3.10.X to latest and greatest VCF version to have full capabilities of VMware Cloud Foundation.
Time to act now, Customers can start planning and engage the VMware Professional Service Organization (PSO) to perform an assessment for a potential in-place migration from VMware Cloud Foundation 3.10.1.2+ releases to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3.1. Contact your sales and channel teams for guidance on choosing the best method for migrating your environment to VCF 4.3.1.
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) provides a ubiquitous hybrid cloud platform which helps enterprise to get all the benefits of a modern private/Hybrid cloud based on proven VMware Software-Defined Data Center architecture. VCF Hybrid cloud platform is the best infrastructure to host both your traditional as well as your cloud native applications.
Here are some key benefits VCF brings on the table for enterprise –
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) provides consistent, repeatable, standardized Infrastructure. Which helps customer to reduces complexity and support resolution times.
2. VCF provides advanced automation that reduces errors and risk in many common tasks performed during Day 0 to Day 2.
3. VMware Cloud Foundation has an automated deployment process, which deploys a standardized workload-ready private/Hybrid cloud in a matter of hours.
4. VCF uses standardized building blocks with automation means customer can easily scale capacity when it is needed, non disruptively.
5. These benefits go beyond the initial deployment and that’s because Cloud Foundation makes it easy to stay up-to-date with security patches and software updates.
6. VCF With VMware Tanzu integration architecture, all these benefits are extended to modern applications allowing developers to deliver and easily maintain developer-ready infrastructure.
7. VCF with agile, reliable, efficient cloud infrastructure that offers consistent operations across private and public clouds.
These benefits brings enterprise to have Modern Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) based on VMware Validated Architecture, which is Agile, Reliable, Efficient cloud infrastructure that offers consistent operations across private and public clouds. To explore more about VCF, Pls refer to https://docs.vmware.com or connect with VMware Sales.
Thank you everyone, Thank you so much for joining the 2nd webinar last week. #2 – Virtual Webinar – Multi-tenant Tanzu Run with VMware Cloud Director (VCD).
Please feel free to share and subscribe YouTube Channel (Virtual Cloud Solutions by Roshan Jha). Thank you and stay tuned for #3 – Virtual Webinar Topic and date in mid november 2020.
Thank you everyone, Thank you so much for joining the monthly webinar series. #1 – Virtual TechTalk – VCF Multi Availability Zone (vSAN Stretched) Design and Deploy Deep Dive.
Here is the video recording of the session –
Please feel free to share and subscribers YouTube Channel (Virtual Cloud Solutions by Roshan Jha). Thanks!
I got interesting question today related to NSX-T Manager sizing for VI Workload Domain (WLD), While bring up management domain, there is an option in Bring-up sheet to choose size of the NSX-T Manager.
But when we deploy VI Workload Domain (WLD) there is no option to choose NSX-T Manager Size (It will only ask for NSX-T manager name and IP details). And By Default 3 Large Size NSX-T Managers will be deployed.
If you require to deploy Medium size NSX-T Manager for VI Workload Domain (WLD), Here are steps to perform on SDDC Manager before deploying VI Workload Domain (WLD) :-
If You have already deployed VI Workload Domain (WLD) and want to change the NSX- T manager size after deployment for VI Workload Domain (WLD), you can follow the VMware NSX Docs:
Last week was big release week from VMware prospective, where VMware released vSphere 7 Update 1, vSAN 7 Update 1, and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.1. There are some nice new enhancements with VCF 4.1. In this post, I’ll highlight the big features which customers and architects were looking with upcoming release.
Rename Objects With VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1, you can now rename domains, clusters, as well as network pools. Domain and Network Pool objects can be renamed from SDDC Manager UI. And Cluster objects can be renamed from vCenter Server. Once you do, you can go back to the SDDC Manager and refresh the UI, the new cluster name will be retrieved by the SDDC Manager.
SDDC Manager Backup Enhancements With this release of VCF 4.1 backup can be scheduled on a reoccurring basis, Now customer can enable backup state change and SDDC manager backup will occur 10 minutes after the successful completion of the event, such as the creation of a workload domain.
Support for vVols as a Principal Storage for Workload Domains With Cloud Foundation 4.1, vVols can now be used for principle storage for workload domains and secondary storage for both management domain as well as workload domains.
Support for Remote Clusters (Extends VCF at the Remote/Edge) We continue to see growing demands of Remote or Edge sites, where customer wants to have small infra footprint at remote or edge sites, but wanted to have automated deployment and lifecycle management as unified management.
With release of VCF 4.1, Support for remote clusters will be a minimum of 3 nodes and maximum of 4 nodes vSAN Ready Node configuration. Remote clusters can be implemented in two different design. The first is when each remote site is managed as a separate workload domain. In this design, each remote site has a dedicated vCenter Server instance. The second is when each remote site is managed as a cluster within a single workload domain. In this design, each remote site shares a single vCenter Server instance. Day 2 operations (such as lifecycle management, adding and removing clusters) can be performed centrally from the data center to the remote sites.
Improved Lifecycle Management (VCF Upgrade Process) In previous editions of VCF, the upgrade process was sequential in nature. For example, if you started at Cloud Foundation version 4.0, And you wanted to go to Cloud Foundation version 4.1, You had go through a process where you first upgraded to any versions that may existed in-between and eventually upgrading to the desired version. This resulted in the need to schedule multiple maintenance windows and took more time to get to the desired state.
Now with release of VCF 4.1 has ability to perform skip level upgrades for the SDDC Manager. With this feature, you can schedule a single maintenance window and update to the desired state in a single action. This can result in a reduction in the time needed to perform the upgrades.
vRealize Suite for VCF With Cloud Foundation 4.1, VCF now deploys a ‘VCF Aware’ vRSLCM appliance. First enhancement is no need to manually download and deploy vRSLCM. Once you have management domain bring up done and SDDC Manager up and running, you can initiate the installation of vRSLCM from SDDC Manager.
Now with VCF 4.1, there will be also bidirectional vRSLCM and SDDC Manager relationship. This will provide unified product experience. Users can log into vRSCLM to perform operations, and SDDC Manager can now discover if vRSLCM was used to deploy vRealize suite of products such as vRealize Automation (vRA), vRealize Operations Manager (vROps) and vRealize Log Insight (vRLI). This will ease the deployment for customers and any potential interoperability issues between vRSLCM and SDDC Manager.
Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) Integration
With the release of VCF 4.1, HCX R143 now has native support for Cloud Foundation 4.1 with Converged Virtual Distributed Switches (CVDS). This will be extremely helpful for customers who have a need to migrate existing workloads to a new Cloud Foundation installation.
Role-Based Access Control for VCF
A New VCF User Role – ‘viewer’
A new ‘view-only’ role has been added to VCF 4.1, In previous edition of VCF had only 2 roles, Administrator and Operator. Now third role available called a ‘viewer’. As name suggest, with this view only role Users has no ability to create, delete, or modify objects. with this limited ‘view-only’ role assigned users may also see a message saying they are unauthorized to perform certain actions.
VCF Local Account
With VCF 4.1, Custer can have local account that can be used during a SSO failure.
What happens when the SSO domain is unavailable for some reason? In this case, the user would not be able to login. To address this, customers now can create VCF local account called admin@local. This account will allow to perform certain actions until the SSO domain is functional again.
This VCF local account can be defined in the deployment bring up worksheet.
I am starting monthly TechTalk focusing SDDC based on VVD and VCF. In the very First TechTalk series planning to Deep Dive on vSAN Standard and Stretch Cluster Design and Deploy with VCF.
#1 – TechTalk – vSAN Standard and Stretch Cluster Design and Deploy Deep Dive with VCF (16th September 2020 – 5-6 PM SGT)
Will share the Zoom meeting details later, Stay Tuned and Happy Learning!!
Last week got invited to present in VMUG Delhi virtual webinar and 100+ participants had joined the session. Thank you #VMUG Delhi Team for invitation to share with the community from where started my journey #vmugdelhi#vmware#VMwareCloudFoundation#vcf
