To enable tasks for Partner Connect Program products, VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager REST APIs and a Partner Connect Program command-line interface (CLI) to communicate with the REST APIs. In addition, to visualize tasks and help deploy products, VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager provides a graphical user interface (GUI).
To deploy and manage a Partner Connect Program product, VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager requires a definition of the product and the product binaries. For this purpose, you can use either the REST API, the CLI, or the UI.
VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager requires access to the repository containing the product OVA files, upgrade packages, etc.
Workload Operation
After triggering a VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager request, the system runs a predefined list with actions.
The VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager appliance processes asynchronous operations received through the request. The tasks associated with these operations are unique to the appliance and are identified by the task IDs.
Entity Structure
VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager deploys products as part of an environment. To create an environment, in VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager, you must first register a vCenter Server to use as a target for the product deployment, define the product and its properties, and refer to the target vCenter Server.
In VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager, you must register the target vCenter Server as a data center component. You must specify the connection settings such as hostname, user name and password, additional IPv4 information about the port groups. A best practice is to configure the NTP, DNS server, subnet, gateway, and the domain information per a vCenter Server port group.
The products follow a generic definition pattern that defines basic common product fields and requires the definition of product-specific details as properties. The REST APIs and the CLI commands are generic and follow the same structure for each product. You can provide the product specific information in the request properties. This allows VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager to expose an API that is common for all supported products.
VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager manages the vCenter Server, NSX-T Manager, and vRealize Operations Manager infrastructure components. VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager cannot deploy and manage data center components. VMware Cloud Provider Lifecycle Manager stores the information about the data center components to deploy new products to previously registered vCenter Server.
