VMware Cloud Director Availability™ is a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solution. Between multi-tenant clouds and on-premises, with asynchronous replications, VMware Cloud Director Availability migrates, protects, fails over, and reverses failover of vApps and virtual machines. VMware Cloud Director Availability is available through the VMware Cloud Provider Program.

VMware Cloud Director Availability introduces a unified architecture for the disaster recovery and migration of vSphere workloads. With VMware Cloud Director Availability, the service providers and their tenants can migrate and protect vApps and virtual machines:
  • From an on-premises vCenter Server site to a VMware Cloud Director site
  • From a VMware Cloud Director site to an on-premises vCenter Server site
  • From one VMware Cloud Director site to another VMware Cloud Director site
Cloud Site
In a single cloud site, one VMware Cloud Director Availability instance consists of:
  • One Cloud Replication Management Appliance
  • One or more Cloud Replicator Appliance instances
  • One Cloud Tunnel Appliance
Multiple Availability cloud sites can coexist in one VMware Cloud Director instance. In the site, all the cloud appliances operate together to support managing replications for virtual machines, secure SSL communication, and storage of the replicated data. The service providers can support recovery for multiple tenant environments that can scale to handle the increasing workloads.
On-Premises Site
In an on-premises environment, a single VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance supports the replication management for tenants by using the VMware Cloud Director Availability vSphere Client Plug-In.

What's New in the VMware Cloud Director Availability Documentation

  • Deployment Architecture in the Cloud includes the above diagram showing multiple VMware Cloud Director Availability instances, connected to multiple vCenter Server Lookup service instances and multiple Single Sign-On (SSO) domains, accessing multiple provider virtual data centers (PVDC) and the organization virtual data centers (OrgVDC) of the organizations, part of the PVDC.
  • Deployment Requirements On-Premises includes the above network diagram updated with port 8043/TCP used by vCenter Server for downloading the VMware Cloud Director Availability vSphere Client Plug-In from the VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance.
  • Users and Sessions includes the minimum set of rights for tenant roles, different than the default Organization Administrator in VMware Cloud Director.
  • Using Replications includes a section detailing the effects of modifying the virtual hardware of the source virtual machine while VMware Cloud Director Availability replicates it.
  • Upgrading in the Cloud and Upgrading On-Premises include a note that since Apr 2021 you can no longer upgrade by using the default VMware repository from versions 4.0.x. To upgrade by using the management interface, use an ISO image or specify a repository: enter https://packages.vmware.com/vcav/4.1/ or when the network restricts the online Internet access enter a local Web server hosting the downloaded upgrade files.

Other Resources

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Since June 2020, VMware Cloud Director Availability replaces the previous product names. For the services and the appliances naming, see the VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.0 Release Notes.