Cloud resources are an abstraction of their underlying vSphere resources and provide the compute and memory resources for VMware Cloud Director virtual machines and vApps, and access to storage and network connectivity.

Cloud resources include provider and organization virtual data centers, external networks, organization virtual data center networks, and network pools. Before you can add cloud resources to VMware Cloud Director, you must add vSphere resources.

For information about organization virtual data centers, see Managing Organization Virtual Data Centers.

For information about organization virtual data center networks, see the Managing Organization Virtual Data Center Networks chapter in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal Guide.

VMware Cloud Director 9.7 introduces the SDDC or dedicated vCenter Server instance as a cloud resource that encapsulates an entire vCenter Server installation. The provider can create and enable a dedicated vCenter Server, publish it to tenants, and create and enable proxies to different components of the underlying vSphere environment. To create, publish to tenants, and manage dedicated vCenter Server instances and proxies, you can use the Service Provider Admin Portal or vCloud OpenAPI. See Managing Dedicated vCenter Server Instances or Getting Started with VMware Cloud Director OpenAPI at https://code.vmware.com.