What is vCloud Director?

vCloud Director operates on a higher level and is an abstraction of vSphere and the hardware that it controls. VCD allows you to create virtual data centers. vSphere, instead, lets you create virtual machines in traditional data centers. 

No longer do customers have to raise tickets to adjust their virtual hardware. They can build new VMs, switches, and networks as needed within their virtual data center. 

What are the Top Features of vCloud Director?

1. Elastic and Secure Virtual Data Centers

This allows organizations to create and deploy multiple software-defined data centers (SDDCs) from a single set of physical resources. Storage, compute and network resources can all be allocated to vApps and virtual machines dynamically and managed at the organizational level. These resources are secured by isolated virtual resources and role-based authentication.

2. Multi-Site Management

VMware vCloud Director lets you manage your various data centers from multiple locations through a single user interface. It has reporting and monitoring to ensure services are running smoothly.

3. ISV Ecosystem

Both VMware VCD and VMware vSphere can be expanded in functionality through their extensibility frameworks. You can add your own or use one of many ISV (Independent Software Vendors) built for them These custom solutions span multiple industries. VCD and vSphere span multiple industries including backup, cloud, DRaaS, and security.

4. DRaaS Workload Protection

In an uncertain world where systems fail, recovery is critical to any organization. DDraaS is a powerful addition to vCloud Director that enables disaster recovery and data protection as a service.

5. Cloud Migration

Enable easy lift and shift migrations with the VMware VCD Availability plugin. With this, customers can perform self-service cold or warm migrations with ease. Cold migrations are when a VM is powered off during the migration, while a warm migration is when the VM is active during the migration. 

You can clone your infrastructure so you could have a test and production environment. Everything from the VMs, networks, switches, and routers would all be cloned at once. This helps with rapid deployments and migrations. 

6. Automation

With vCloud Director, you no longer have to open tickets to create virtual machines or manage your infrastructure or use complicated automation scripts. With the VCD Administrator power user, you can make these changes as needed. vCloud Director enables automation through a point and click interface. Behind the scenes, vCloud Director generates a script and vSphere executes the script. This not only simplifies automation, but it also brings with it new kinds of automation that might not otherwise be possible. The VMware template feature is also very handy allowing you to rapidly deploy virtual machines.

7. Application Platform-as-a-Service

You can service your customer’s needs by creating applications for vCloud Director that extend its capabilities. There are also a bunch of already built applications for vCloud Director available on the VMware Cloud Marketplace. They are certified to be compatible and ready to use.

8. Resellers

VCD can be used for value-added hosting resellers who build their own data centers virtually in software and then sell the various virtual machines to end users. It can also be useful for service providers in allowing customers to self-service their infrastructure.

What are the Business Benefits of Using vCloud Director?

Operational Efficiency

Multi-tenancy infrastructure can be managed, cloned, and automated through an easy-to-use interface. Self-service virtual data centers are secure, isolated, and easy to use. Finally, monitoring of your VDC allows for efficient allocation of resources as they are needed by various vApps and virtual machines.

Monetization

Self-service data centers allow for extreme monetization. Your customers can trigger workflows that automate the building of VMs and network devices in their data center. The reselling potential of data centers and VMs within that data center is phenomenal. Many companies integrate virtualization into their systems by hiring developers to build a management platform. 

Scalability and Security

vCloud Director is built for growth. You can clone data centers or configurations and deploy them to multiple customers. Ensure these deployed systems stay safe with Next Generation Firewalls able to protect all layers of the TCP stack. With tools like the NSX Distributed Firewall and other NSX tools, not only can you filter packets, you can inspect the data in the packets and protect against malware and advanced attacks. Also, load balance your workflows and build your VMware clusters out as needed.