VMware just released new version of vCloud Director – and it is a major release with version number 9.0.
Its documentation has now been moved to VMware Docs website: https://docs.vmware.com/en/vCloud-Director/index.html
I plan in the following days to blog about the major new features, so for now I will just provide list of all of the features, categorized by their exposure to tenants or provider.
New features in tenant context:
- HTML 5 user interface which provides simplified VM deployment workflows (no vApp needed), is customizable and also provides VM Metrics (those coming from Cassandra DB)
- Networking enhancements: NSX Distributed routing with up to 1000 east-west routing optimized Org VDC networks per Org VDC Edge Gateway, security groups and tags for distributed firewall policies, VLAN tagging for VXLAN based Org VDC networks for Virtual Guest Tagging
- vMotion of VM between vApps in the same Org VDC
New features in tenant context with provider support:
- Multisite – multiple vCloud Director instances can be federated with association of individual organizations
- VLAN trunk support for vCloud Director external networks
New features in provider context:
- Manual VXLAN network pool creation
- Designating specific Provider VDC resource pool/cluster for dedicated Edge GW placement
- PostgreSQL DB support for vCloud Director database including migration from MS SQL/Oracle and high availability
- Securing vCloud Director database communication with encryption
- Per tenant storage migration workflows for storage array lifecycle
- VM metric database simplification (no KairosDB needed anymore, just pure Cassandra)
- vVOL support
- Enhanced support for vCenter Server HW/Guest operating systems
- vSphere 5.5 is no longer supported
Note that announced migration tool called vCloud Director Extender has not yet been released.
