Before installing VMware Cloud Director Availability, verify that your environment satisfies the following requirements.

Deployment Types and Hardware Requirements

You deploy all VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances by using a single installation OVA file in all cloud sites.

Depending on scale and deployment goals, you can select various deployment types. The following table describes the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances in a cloud site and their hardware requirements.
Table 1. VMware Cloud Director Availability Appliances
Appliance Type Description and Services Hardware Requirements
Cloud Replication Management Appliance A dedicated appliance, that runs the following VMware Cloud Director Availability services:
  • Manager Service
  • Cloud Service with embedded VMware Cloud Director Availability Tenant Portal

You deploy the Cloud Replication Management Appliance to configure replications from and to VMware Cloud Director™.
  • 2 vCPUs
  • 4 GB RAM
  • 10 GB Storage
Cloud Replicator Appliance A dedicated appliance for the Replicator Service that handles the replication traffic for a site. For large-scale environments, you can deploy more than one Cloud Replicator Appliance per cloud site.
  • 4 vCPUs
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 10 GB Storage
Cloud Tunnel Appliance A dedicated appliance for the Tunnel Service.
  • 2 vCPUs
  • 2 GB RAM
  • 10 GB Storage
Combined Appliance An all-in-one appliance deployment type, only suitable for testing and evaluation environments. The Combined Appliance includes all VMware Cloud Director Availability services:
  • Manager Service
  • Replicator Service
  • Cloud Service with embedded VMware Cloud Director Availability Tenant Portal
  • Tunnel Service
  • 4 vCPUs
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 10 GB Storage

For more information about each service, see Services.

In the on-premises sites, a separate OVA file is used to deploy the VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance. When installing VMware Cloud Director Availability on-premises, only the Replicator Service deploys in the VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance.

VMware Cloud Director Availability Deployment Requirements

  • Use the resource vCenter Server Lookup service instance, when in a single site several vCenter Server instances are dedicated for different tasks:
    • vCenter Server instances dedicated for management operations.
    • vCenter Server instances dedicated as VMware Cloud Director resources.
    VMware Cloud Director Availability uses the resource vCenter Server instances to locate and authenticate to resources and create or edit inventory objects. Register the Replicator Service and the Cloud Service, and optionally, the Tunnel Service and the Manager Service, with the vCenter Server Lookup service, provided by the Platform Services Controller used by the resource vCenter Server instances.
  • In each cloud site, deploy one or more Cloud Replication Management Appliances per a VMware Cloud Director server group. The server group in VMware Cloud Director consists of a VMware Cloud Director cell and a resource vCenter Server with at least one ESXi host.
  • VMware Cloud Director Availability verifies the host name of VMware Cloud Director in the VMware Cloud Director certificate. The CommonName or at least one of the entries in the Subject Alternative Name must match the FQDN or IP of VMware Cloud Director used when registering VMware Cloud Director in VMware Cloud Director Availability.
  • VMware Cloud Director vApps discovery and adoption must be disabled. For more information, see Discovering and Adopting vApps in the VMware Cloud Director documentation.
  • In the ESXi hosts, a VMkernel interface can be dedicated for the replication traffic. By default, ESXi handles the replication traffic through its management VMkernel interface. As a good practice, you can separate the management traffic from the replication traffic by creating a dedicated replication VMkernel interface. Use the following tags when creating a VMkernel interface for the replication traffic:
    • Use the vSphere Replication tag to configure the ESXi host for the outgoing replication traffic.
    • Use the vSphere Replication NFC tag to configure the ESXi host for the incoming replication traffic.

    Configure the replication VMkernel interface in its own IP subnet and connect Replicator Service to the same virtual port group. Using this configuration, the replication traffic between the ESXi hosts and the Replicator Service instances stays in the same broadcast domain. As a result, uncompressed replication traffic avoids crossing a router and saves the network bandwidth. For information about configuring a dedicated replication VMkernel interface, see Set Up a VMkernel Adapter for vSphere Replication Traffic on a Source Host in the vSphere Replication documentation.

VMware Cloud Director Availability Storage Requirements

For a successful failover, the destination storage must accommodate double the source virtual machine disk size.
  • Example required space in the datastore, for a source virtual machine with a 2 TB virtual disk. When the replication is created, VMware Cloud Director Availability allocates 2 TB in the destination storage. VMware Cloud Director Availability allocates additional 2 TB when starting a failover task. After finishing the failover task, the additional 2 TB space is unallocated.
  • Example for a VMware vSAN storage, with the same virtual machine. The same storage implication applies, where the vSAN must accommodate double the virtual machine disk size. When the replication is created in this example, VMware Cloud Director Availability allocates 2 TB multiplied by the vSAN_Protection_Level_Disk_Space_Penalty. When starting a failover task, additional 2 TB are allocated multiplied by the vSAN_Protection_Level_Disk_Space_Penalty. For more information, see About vSAN Policies and Planning Capacity in vSAN in the vSphere documentation.

VMware Cloud Director Availability Supported Topologies

The resource vCenter Server instances within a VMware Cloud Director site must be within the same single sign-on domain. All Replicator Service, Manager Service, Cloud Service, and Tunnel Service instances within the respective site must be configured with that same single sign-on domain.