By: Lavanya Shastri
On January 14th 2020, VMware achieved general availability of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 3.9.1, introducing support for Application Virtual Networks, API support for multiple physical NICs and vSphere Distributed switches, and improvements to Cloud Builder and Developer Center. The following post provides an overview of the release content and links to additional information.
Application Virtual Networks
Application Virtual Networks (AVN) are software defined overlay networks that lay the foundation for supporting workload mobility use-cases such as planned migration or disaster recovery. To learn more about AVNs and how it can benefit organizations, please review this blog post on Application Virtual Networks.
New installations of Cloud Foundation 3.9.1 will require setting up AVN at deploy time. This in turn paves the way for a simpler transition as we migrate from NSX-v to NSX-T support in the management domain in upcoming releases.
Existing Cloud Foundation customers can elect to set up AVN support at the time of upgrade to 3.9.1. At this time, it is recommended that customers contact VMware Support for assistance in configuring AVNs.
API support for multiple pNICs and vSphere Distributed Switches
The VMware Cloud Foundation API now supports up to three vSphere Distributed switches and six physical NICs, providing more flexibility to support high performance use cases and physical traffic separation.
Cloud Builder : Updates UI and Deployment Report
The UI for Cloud Builder has had a significant update to improve the workflow experience. For example, choosing the workflow types has been moved from the OVA settings into the main UI wizard. There’s a new progress bar, greater feedback, and can navigate more easily through the workflows.
Cloud Builder now produces a detailed report of all the steps completed and which configurations have been set. This is useful in several ways; for example, it helps explain all the actions that are being automated by the tool so there’s a greater environmental understanding, and it produces a documented a site-specific configuration of the newly deployed SDDC.
Developer Center
Now Cloud Foundation APIs and code samples can now be accessed directly from the SDDC Manager Dashboard. This allows users to run the API against the current VCF instance for easy testing of scripts. Users can search by functionality or use-cases to get to code snippets and examples on API use.
Additional Updates
In VCF 3.9.1, there is now support for L3 vSAN in stretched and unstretched configurations for VCF with VxRail. This enables increased availability with minimal downtime and data loss.
There are also enhancements to password management for VxRail Manager and ESX. You can now update or rotate the password for the root and mystic users of the VxRail Manager and the root user of ESXi hosts using the SDDC Manager.
VCF now supports SSO Management Domain Convergence for VxRail. This provides the ability to link between the SSOs (PSCs) of two or more VMware Cloud Foundation instances so that the management and the VI workload domains are visible in each of the instances.
VCF 3.9.1 provides key new functionality and adds important capabilities to establish private and hybrid cloud automation, networking and lifecycle management for modern and traditional application environments. To learn more, please review the VCF 3.9.1 Release Notes and VCF documentation.
