The VMware Cloud Foundation Operations Guide provides best practices and step-by-step instructions about operating VMware Cloud Foundation™ including full-stack shutdown and startup and verifying whether the state of VMware Cloud Foundation is intact after a maintenance operation.
This guide covers all software products and workload domain types that are supported by VMware Cloud Foundation including VMware vSphere® with VMware Tanzu® and VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle™.
You can follow industry best practices when performing operations in a VMware Cloud Foundation deployment. See Best Practices for Operating VMware Cloud Foundation.
To maintain component integration and avoid operation faults, you follow the specified order and steps to shut down and then start up the management components in VMware Cloud Foundation. See Shutdown and Startup of VMware Cloud Foundation.
To meet the requirements of your organization for security and compliance for your VMware Cloud Foundation environment including industry compliance standards, you configure manually the password policies of the individual management components in the environment. See Password Policy Configuration for VMware Cloud Foundation.
Because SDDC Manager does not manage certificates for ESXi hosts, if required by the policy of your organization, you manually replace the default host certificates that are signed by the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) with external CA-signed certificates. See ESXi Certificate Management for VMware Cloud Foundation.
Instead of the default step-by-step approach by using product user interface, you can manage the certificates of the management components for the management domain or a VI workload domain in an automated way by running a PowerShell script. See Managing Management Component Certificates in VMware Cloud Foundation by Using PowerShell.
Intended Audience
The information in VMware Cloud Foundation Operations Guide is intended for data center cloud administrators and operators who are familiar with:
- Concepts of virtualization and software-defined data centers (SDDCs)
- Networking and concepts such as uplinks, NICs, and IP networks
- Hardware components such as top-of-rack (ToR) switches, inter-rack switches, servers with direct attached storage, cables, and power supplies
- Methods for setting up physical racks in a data center
- Using VMware vSphere® to work with virtual machines.
PowerShell Modules for VMware Cloud Foundation Operations
As an alternative to step-by-step workflows in the product UI, you can perform VMware Cloud Foundation operations in an automated infrastructure-as-code approach by using open-source PowerShell modules from VMware.
| Operation Type | PowerShell Module or Script | More Information |
|---|---|---|
| Shutdown and startup of workload domains | VMware.CloudFoundation.PowerManagement | See VMware.CloudFoundation.PowerManagement open-source project in GitHub. |
| Password policy configuration of management components | VMware.CloudFoundation.PasswordManagement | See VMware.CloudFoundation.PasswordManagement open-source project in GitHub. |
| Additional certificate management | VMware.CloudFoundation.CertificateManagement | See VMware.CloudFoundation.CertificateManagement open-source project in Github. |
| PowerShell based interaction with the VMware Cloud Foundation API | PowerVCF | PowerVCF open-source project in Github |
| Report-based health monitoring of VMware Cloud Foundation | VMware.CloudFoundation.Reporting | VMware.CloudFoundation.Reporting open-source project in Github |
| Automation for VMware Validated Solutions | PowerValidatedSolutions | PowerValidatedSolutions open-source project in Github |
| Automation for SDDC Manager bundle management | PowerShell Script for VMware Cloud Foundation Bundle Management | Knowledge Base article 94760 |
Related VMware Cloud Foundation Publications
The VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 Release Notes lists the software components, new features, compatibility, and known issues in VMware Cloud Foundation.
You can open these documents from the VMware Cloud Foundation Documentation main page:
- The VMware Cloud Foundation Planning and Preparation Workbook contains the environment specification of your VMware Cloud Foundation deployment. It also provides dynamic sizing guidance.
- The VMware Cloud Foundation Design Guides explains the design principles of and provides best practices for the management component configuration in a VMware Cloud Foundation environment.
- The VMware Cloud Foundation Deployment Guide is intended for data center cloud administrators who deploy a VMware Cloud Foundation system in their organization's data center.
- The VMware Cloud Foundation Administration Guide contains detailed information about how to administer and operate a VMware Cloud Foundation system in your data center.
- The VMware Cloud Foundation Lifecycle Management document describes how to manage the life cycle of a VMware Cloud Foundation environment.
- VMware Validated Solutions provide technical reference for designing and implementing add-on configurations on top of VMware Cloud Foundation that solve a business use case, such as, central identity management, workload provisioning, vSphere with Tanzu configuration, and others.
Your VMware Cloud Foundation system includes a stack of VMware software products and components. You can find the documentation for those software products at VMware Docs.
VMware Cloud Foundation Glossary
The VMware Cloud Foundation Glossary defines terms specific to VMware Cloud Foundation.
Update History
This VMware Cloud Foundation Operations Guide is updated when necessary.
| Revision |
Description |
|---|---|
| 30 APR 2024 | Monitoring and Alerting Best Practices are now available. |
| 07 NOV 2023 |
Initial version. |
