Understanding VMware Cloud Director™

VMware Cloud Director™ provides role-based access to a web-based tenant portal that allows the members of an organization to interact with the organization's resources to create and work with vApps and virtual machines.

Before you can access your organization, a VMware Cloud Director system administrator must create the organization, assign it resources, and provide the URL to access the tenant portal. Each organization includes one or more organization administrators, who finish setting up the organization by adding members and setting policies and preferences. After the organization is set up, non-administrator users can log in to create, use, and manage virtual machines and vApps.

Organizations

An organization is a unit of administration for a collection of users, groups, and computing resources. Users authenticate at the organization level, supplying credentials established by an organization administrator when the user was created or imported. System administrators create and provision organizations, while organization administrators manage organization users, groups, and catalogs.

Users and Groups

An organization can contain an arbitrary number of users and groups. Users can be created locally by the organization administrator or imported from a directory service. Groups must be imported from the directory service. Permissions within an organization are controlled through the assignment of rights and roles to users and groups.

Virtual Data Centers

An organization virtual data center provides resources to an organization. Virtual data centers provide an environment where virtual systems can be stored, deployed, and operated. They also provide storage for virtual CD and DVD media. An organization can have multiple virtual data centers.

Organization Virtual Data Center Networks

An organization virtual data center network is contained within a VMware Cloud Director organization virtual data center and is available to all the vApps in the organization. An organization virtual data center network allows vApps within an organization to communicate with each other. An organization virtual data center network can be connected to an external network or isolated and internal to the organization. Only system administrators can create organization virtual data center networks, but organization administrators can manage organization virtual data center networks, including the network services they provide.

vApp Networks

A vApp network is contained within a vApp and allows virtual machines in the vApp to communicate with each other. You can connect a vApp network to an organization virtual data center network to allow the vApp to communicate with other vApps in the organization and outside of the organization, if the organization virtual data center network is connected to an external network.

Catalogs

Organizations use catalogs to store vApp templates and media files. The members of an organization that have access to a catalog can use its vApp templates and media files to create their own vApps. Organization administrators can copy items from public catalogs to their organization catalog.

Dedicated vCenter Server Instances (SDDCs) and Proxies

A Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) encapsulates an entire vCenter Server environment. A dedicated vCenter Server instance can include one or more proxies that provide access to different components from the underlying environment. The system administrator can publish one or more dedicated vCenter Server instances to your organization. You can use the containing proxies to access the UI or API of the proxied components.