We are pleased to announce the update release of VMware Cloud Director 10.2.2 with some new capability, compliance updates as well as better native container services (Tanzu) coverage and all new autoscaling!
Updates in this release include;
Building on existing Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) delivered in VCD 9.1, we have completed extensive testing with FIPS enabled on the cell and appliance and individually. Now in 10.2.2 you can simply enable the switch for VMware Cloud Director appliance to use FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules and to run in FIPS-compliant mode.
New Global Placement Policies (API only) unlock previously constrained Placement Policies! Now providers can use cross pVDC policies, allowing policies to be assigned to VM/vAPP templates that can be instantiated on another pVDC on the same VCD. This simplifies operations for the provider and ensures service consistency for the tenants.
Guest Customization (the configuration and network settings of the guest OS) is now available for encrypted VMs, enabling cloning VM or deploying from templates and ensuring simpler rollout of encrypted solutions.
New catalog specific storage policies deliver storage flexibility by enabling providers that are using VSAN to have Catalog Storage backed by another option (NFS, etc) and shared across cluster boundaries.
Enhanced UI work has been done to bring in VDC Templates to the HTML UI (a long awaited request), which will simplify operational procedures onboarding and managing tenant VDCs.
We have extended the 10.2 Guided Tours feature to allow for users to share server-driven Guided Tours with other users and use persistence as well as control who can access what based on their user role. This should provide a lot more flexibility to the feature and the assistance level required pertinent to the user role.
Improved support for organization VDCs backed by NSX-T Data Center with directly connected organization VDC networks. This is provided with a system admin’s ability to create an external network mapping to a vSphere distributed port group and then create a directly connected organization VDC network from the tenant portal; tenant users will then be able to consume said organization VDC network to connect their workloads.
VMware NSX Migration for VMware Cloud Director 1.2.1 will be coming soon after VCD 10.2.2. It will provide an assessment mode, direct organization VDC network support, and modular execution of migration steps, providing more control on the overall migration process. – watch for the blog post!
If you haven’t started looking at NSX-T please consider prioritising this as time is running out!
Now you can provide much-needed network isolation for K8s clusters allowing you to multi-tenant your offering and secure your Tanzu cluster services. Chargeback for Tanzu K8s services is available now via API integration for the chargeback. Lastly increased POD networking controls are available for your to configure a network CIDR per cluster. If you are curious about using Tanzu with VCD, we will be providing a reference design in April that will help you understand all the key components and topologies.
CSE 3.0.2 is released with VCD 10.2.2, this new update along with the Kubernetes Clusters UI Plugin can be used to manage VMware Cloud Director provisioned Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters together with Native and TKGI clusters. With this update, you can now create a K8 cluster using the 1.19.3 template running on Ubuntu. You can check out the newer versions of the native K8 templates that are supported here.
The CSE update also supports NSX-T routed networks, CSE now does the job of setting up the edge gateway, providing access to the cluster over routed org vdc networks, so that the CSE API is available to the Marketplace services for provisioning helm chart-based application templates. Yet another reason you should be looking at upgrading to NSX-T if you haven’t already!
VCD 10.2.2 introduces an optional module which enables load-based horizontal autoscaling for vApps. A tenant user can define scale-groups to specify the VM template and load thresholds for CPU and/or memory usage. The autoscaling module will monitor the utilization of VMs in the scale-group, and if the load exceeds the specified threshold(s), a new VM will automatically deployed from the template and configured in the load-balancer. The module also supports automatic scale-in if the utilization decreases again.
Now you can monitor your VCD appliances with SNMP polling. Management systems can poll the new embedded SNMP agent using v1, v2C and v3 GET, GETBULK and GETNEXT requests to gain visibility into the system status and any events generated. If you have used the netsnmp module prior this release, be aware this is uninstalled, we are now using the vmware-snmp agent and firewall rules will need to be updated.
Find out more by taking a look at the release notes https://bit.ly/39OSvqo or download the update https://bit.ly/3wDGIFc
