Category: VMware Cloud Provider

VMware vCloud Usage Meter 3.6.1 – Metering of vCloud Availability 3.x and Logic Review

Last week, the VMware Cloud Provider team released a hot patch for VMware vCloud Usage Meter 3.6.1. Usage Meter can now automatically meter vCloud Availability (vCAv) 3.x instances. This also covers Site Recovery Manager (SRM) virtual appliances along with a few bug fixes.

Prior to this hot patch, a VMware Cloud Provider would need to manually report usage by exporting the vCAv Manager report on a monthly basis. This hot patch mitigates that process by now providing automatic metering of vCAv instances within a Usage Meter appliance.

This is intended for Cloud Providers that are participating in the VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP).

In this post, I will review the setup instructions and what needs to be done so proper metering is in place for vCAv 3.0.

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vCloud Usage Meter 4.1 – Overview, Deployment and Tips

Since we are in the midst of VMworld season, let’s discuss our next-generation metering solution for VMware Cloud Providers, vCloud Usage Meter 4.1.

Introduction to vCloud Usage Meter 4.1

vCloud Usage Meter 4.1 is a multi-year investment on developing a scalable, provider-grade metering appliance that meets the terms of the VMware Cloud Provider Program agreement. The main goal of Usage Meter (UM) is for Cloud Provider to VMware reporting on a monthly basis.

I’m sure many people are going to ask – what’s the difference between 3.6.1 and 4.1 of Usage Meter? Let’s start off with a diagram.

As you can see, 4.1 was built with direct vCloud Usage Insight (VUI) integration. This provides a single controller to many one-to-many UM instances for a provider.

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What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 10.0? (2/2)

Continuation of What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 10.0?

For my final topics on vCD 10.0, let’s review the following:

  1. vCloud Director Appliance Updates and Migration Path
  2. Placement and Sizing Policies
  3. Backup Ecosystem Certification
  4. Miscellaneous
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What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 10.0? (1/2)

With much excitement, VMware is announcing vCloud Director (vCD) 10.0 during VMworld US. This continues to provide significant value to our VMware Cloud Providers and tenants that consume vCD for services.

vCD 10.0 continues to demonstrate and focus on the following objectives:

  1. A Service Delivery Platform – rapidly deploy and integrate services into a multi-tenant, scalable platform with ecosystem partnership.
  2. Multi-Workload and Extensible Capabilities – it’s not about traditional VM’s anymore. Distinct additions like native PKS integration or next-generation virtual network services are integrated out of the box.
  3. Intuitive User Experience – while technology can be difficult sometimes, vCD orchestrates and automates many of the backend infrastructure tasks to get services operationalized. With the new H5 interface, this is very evident.

I’m going to summarize a few items that are pertinent to this release. However, this is not this is a comprehensive list by any means. The goal of this post is to provide an overview of why each of these additions/updates matter to our service providers and consumers.

Disclaimer: while vCD 10.0 is announced as of today, features might change based on the general availability (GA) date. I’ve been working with a release candidate build for my review. Therefore, this is subject to change.

  1. HTML5 User Interface Transition
  2. NSX-T Support
  3. Central Point of Management Additions

In Part 2, I will cover:

  1. vCD Appliance Updates and Migration Path
  2. Placement and Sizing Policies
  3. Backup Ecosystem Certification
  4. Miscellaneous

Hang tight, there’s a lot of information here.

Continue reading “What’s New with VMware vCloud Director 10.0? (1/2)”