A federation is a group of SDDC Manager instances, such that each member can view information about the other SDDC Manager instances in the group. The federation creator is granted the controller role by default.

You can create multiple federations within your organization, but global visibility is available only within a federation. Members can belong to only a single federation at a time.

See VMware Configuration Maximums for information about the maximum number of SDDC Manager instances that can be managed using Multi-Instance Management

Prerequisites

  • The SDDC Manager certificate requires TLS Web server authentication and TLS Web client authentication extended key usage (EKU). If you are using Microsoft CA or a third-party CA, you must ensure that the Certificate Authority template is configured with both these EKUs.
  • Retrieve the FQDN of your SDDC Manager.

Procedure

  1. In the SDDC Manager UI, click the Multi-Instance View () icon at the top of the window.
  2. Click Create.
  3. Enter a name for the federation.
  4. Enter a display name for the member. You may want to base this on the location of this SDDC Manager instance.
  5. Type the FQDN of the SDDC Manager.
  6. Select the city and country of this SDDC Manager instance and click Create.

Results

It can take a few minutes for the federation to be created. After the federation is created, the Multi-Instance Management Dashboard is displayed. The federation location is marked with a green dot on the world map. You can zoom in or out of the map.

The dashboard also displays the inventory (hosts and workload domains) and capacity (CPU, memory, and storage) across the federation. These details are updated when additional members join the federation.

What to do next

Invite an SDDC Manager instance to join the federation.