Configure Distributed Catalogs for a VMware Cloud Director Organization

Before any user can create a distributed catalog in VMware Cloud Director, you must complete the distributed catalog set up.

A distributed catalog is a catalog that uses a distributed storage policy to sync its content with its peers. A distributed storage policy consists of distributed datastores that you set up so that the data sync is done using third party sync technologies.

Users in multiple VMware Cloud Director instances or a single instance where more than one vCenter instance is available can access and update simultaneously a distributed catalog. All users in all VMware Cloud Director instances that have access to the distributed catalog can see the changes, additions, and removals that users in other VMware Cloud Director instances make to the catalog. Only service providers can set up distributed catalogs.

All VMware Cloud Director instances see the same catalog state and content and receive the same updates from the shared distributed storage. The time it takes for the changes to appear on all instances depends on the distributed storage.

Note: You cannot create distributed catalogs in a VDC that has fast provisioning enabled.

Procedure

1. In vCenter, set up shared datastores between the sites that you want the catalog to be distributed between.
2. In vCenter, for each datastore, set up the custom attribute vcd-distributed-catalog with value Yes.
   See the Add and Edit Custom Attributes topic in the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation.
3. (Optional) Verify that one or more datastores are distributed.
   1. Log in to the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Admin Portal.
   2. From the primary left navigation panel, select Resources, and from the page top navigation bar, select Infrastructure Resources.
   3. From the secondary left panel, select Storage Containers.
   4. To verify that the system recognizes your datastore as distributed, view the Distributed and Distribution Health columns.
      A distributed datastore must have a check mark under Distributed and status Healthy under Distribution Health. VMware Cloud Director considers a datastore to be unhealthy if no heartbeat was received for more than a set amount of time. You can configure the period by using config scan-distributed-datastore-heartbeat.timeout.seconds.
4. In vCenter, create a storage policy backing the distributed datastores.
   A distributed datastore must not be part of more than one storage policy, otherwise the system reports a configuration issue with those distributed storage policies.
5. Log in to the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Admin Portal.
6. Add the storage policy to VMware Cloud Director.
   See Add a VM Storage Policy to a Provider Virtual Data Center.
7. Edit the entity types that the storage policy supports so that the policy supports Catalog Media, vApp/VM Templates, or both.
   VMware Cloud Director does not support any other entity types for distributed catalogs apart from the catalog entities: Catalog Media and vApp/VM Templates. For steps to edit the entity types of a storage policy, see Edit the Entity Types That a VMware Cloud Director Storage Policy Supports.
8. (Optional) Verify that the storage policy is distributed.
   • From the list of storage policies in a provider VDC, expand the storage policy view and verify that the policy has the VCD/DistributedCatalog capability.
   • If the storage policy has at least one distributed datastore, select the radio button next to the storage policy, and click Check Distributed Health.
   If you make any changes to the policy, you might have to refresh the page for the changes to appear.
9. Add the policy to the organization VDCs that will have access to the distributed catalog.
   See Add a VM Storage Policy to a VMware Cloud Director Organization Virtual Data Center.

What to do next

Create a Distributed Catalog in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal