To use VMware Cloud Flex Storage, you must activate a storage region in which you have SDDCs deployed (or where you plan to deploy them).

Once you activate a storage region, you can create datastores to provide storage for SDDCs in that region. You can Create a Subscription during region activation or at a later time.

After you activate a region, you can create datastores there for use by SDDCs in the same availability zone as datastores you create.

If you are activating the first region in this organization, your user account must have the Organization Owner and Global Console Admin roles. The Organization Owner role is required to create the initial global OAuth app needed for authentication between VMware Cloud Flex Storage and VMware Cloud Services.
Note: If the global OAuth app used to authenticate VMware Cloud Flex Storage with VMware Cloud Services is deleted or changed, you must recreate the global OAuth app.

Organization-wide Authentication Policies

If you get an error during region activation stating that the storage region cannot be activated because of your Organization's authentication policy, you need to add an exception to the authentication policy to allow VMware Cloud Flex Storage IP addresses.

These IP addresses are used by Service Management to communicate with VMware Cloud Flex Storage to perform tasks such as new activations, upgrades, monitoring, and deactivation. Without the ability to communicate through these IP addresses, VMware Cloud Flex Storage cannot deploy or manage your service instances or properly authenticate with your organization.

To add these IP addresses as exceptions, see Add Exceptions to the Authentication Policy.

Procedure

  1. Log in to VMware Cloud Services using your VMware account at https://console.cloud.vmware.com.
  2. Under Services > My Services, click the VMware Cloud Flex Storage tile.
  3. From the left navigation, select Regions.
  4. Click the Activate Regions button.
  5. In the Activation page, select an AWS region where you want to add storage. Click Next.
    If you do not have a storage term subscription in the selected region, you can choose to either pay monthly or all up front. To create a subscription, click the Create Subscription link.
  6. Once you have made a choice, click Next.
  7. On the Summary page, select the check boxes to confirm the deployment and that once you activate this region, charges start incurring.
    Note: If this is the first region that you are activating for your organization, you must also confirm that by activating the region you are creating the global OAuth app used for authenticating VMware Cloud Flex Storage with VMware Cloud Services.
  8. Click Activate Region.

What to do next

When the region finishes being activated, you can now manage the region, which launches the VMware Cloud Flex Storage UI.

If you have not done so, create a subscription for the region you activated.