Before deploying and pairing VMware Cloud Director Availability, first verify the interoperability between VMware Cloud Director Availability and ESXi, the vSphere product edition, and the other VMware products in the disaster recovery infrastructure, the interoperability and the supported versions between the source site and the destination site.

VMware Cloud Director Availability interoperability matrices

Before installing VMware Cloud Director Availability, verify the supported versions of ESXi and vSphere. For interoperability information between VMware Cloud Director Availability and other VMware products, see the Product Interoperability Matrix.

vSphere product edition

All sites participating in a replication must run vSphere product editions that include the vSphere Replication feature in their licenses. The ESXi hosts in all paired on-premises sites and in all paired cloud sites must run one of the following vSphere product editions that include the vSphere Replication feature:
  • vSphere Essentials Plus
  • vSphere Standard
  • vSphere Enterprise
  • vSphere Enterprise Plus
  • vSphere Desktop
Note: Cannot replicate virtual machines to or from ESXi hosts that do not include the vSphere Replication feature in their licenses. Attempting to configure a replication for virtual machines to or from such a host causes failure for the replication with the following error message.

Operation aborted due to an unexpected error.

This issue occurs when in the source or in the destination site the underlying vSphere environment uses, for example, a vSphere Essentials license. To successfully replicate, configure the underlying environments with licenses that support the vSphere Replication feature in all participating sites.

For information about the license requirements for vSphere Replication, see vSphere Replication Licensing in the vSphere Replication documentation.

Paired sites versions interoperability

You can pair Cloud Director sites that have mismatching VMware Cloud Director Availability versions deployed. For information about the source site VMware Cloud Director Availability interoperability with the disaster recovery infrastructure in the destination site, select your version and see Managing pairing with Cloud Director sites in the Administration Guide.

Metering cloud sites

As a provider, you must meter the consumption data of each cloud site instance of VMware Cloud Director Availability by adding the Public Service Endpoint of the appliances in VMware vCloud® Usage Meter. For more information, see the Usage Meter integration section in the VMware Cloud Director Availability documentation.

Supported versions

For information about the currently supported VMware Cloud Director Availability versions, see the VMware Cloud Director Availability supported versions section in the VMware Cloud Director Availability documentation.