VMware Validated Design provides several types of documentation for operating, maintaining, extending, and modifying a deployed SDDC. This documentation is delivered as a set of add-on packages that could be asynchronously published.

For details on the latest available documentation, see Documentation Map for VMware Validated Design.

Operational Guidance

The operational guidance in VMware Validated Design provides a prescriptive guidance on the common operations that you perform after the SDDC implementation is completed.

Documentation Feature Description
Type of Guidance According to the target operation type, each guide provides a set of step-by-step instructions organized by layer or solution. The guidance is based on the SDDC configuration in the design and deployment documentation.
Audience Cloud architects, infrastructure administrators, cloud administrators, and cloud operators
Supported SDDC Architecture
  • Standard SDDC for all operations guides
  • Standard SDDC, Consolidated SDDC, and ROBO SDDC for the certificate replacement documentation.
Covered use cases
  • SDDC monitoring by setting up dashboards and activating alerts for monitoring the SDDC, and lists of notifications that are most symptomatic.
  • Upgrade of the SDDC management components.
  • Backup and restore of the SDDC management components by using a VADP-based solution.
  • Disaster recovery of the SDDC management components
  • Operational verification of the SDDC management components after software maintenance such as installation, restore, upgrade, or failover.
  • Replacement of the certificates of the SDDC management components if the certificates are expiring or if you are scaling out a component.

Scenarios

A scenario represents a sub- or super-set of VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center. A scenario guide provides an SDDC solution to achieve specific IT outcomes, such as application security, IT automation, and so on.

Documentation Feature Description
Type of Guidance According to the target outcome, each VMware Validated Design scenario guide supports a set of validated workflows. The workflows are related to the common operations that you perform in the covered case.
Audience Cloud architects, infrastructure administrators, cloud administrators, and cloud operators.
Supported SDDC Architecture Standard SDDC
Covered use cases
  • IT Automating IT
  • Intelligent Operations
  • Micro-Segmentation

Technical Notes

A technical note in VMware Validated Design is a short document that describes a modification of or an extension to the prescribed SDDC implementation.

Documentation Feature Description
Type of Guidance According to the target outcome, each technical note discusses a specific configuration and nodes from the VMware Validated Design documentation.
Audience Cloud architects, infrastructure administrators, and cloud administrators.
Supported SDDC Architecture Standard SDDC
Covered use cases
  • Dynamic routing configuration options
  • Designing an SDDC that consists of several regions
  • Integration with and migration to an SDDC that complies with VMware Validated Design

Workload Domain Guidance

In addition to the initial domain setup for tenant workloads, you can evaluate and deploy a workload domain where tenant workloads can use the features of add-on products such as VMware NSX-T.

Documentation Feature Description
Type of Guidance VMware Validated Design provides design and deployment guidance to extend the SDDC with another workload domain that runs a solution in addition to the software for implementing the SDDC. A solution in this case consists of one or two products that are additional to the software for the main SDDC implementation.
Audience Cloud architects, infrastructure administrators, and cloud administrators.
Supported SDDC Architecture Standard SDDC
Covered use cases
  • Additional workload domain with NSX-T
  • Additional workload domain with NSX-T with multiple availability zones
  • Additional workload domain with NSX-T and VMware Enterprise PKS

VMware Hybrid Cloud Guidance

You can use a VMware cloud solution on VMware Cloud™ on AWS or VMware Cloud™ services to extend the capabilities of the on-premises SDDC.

Documentation Feature Description
Type of Guidance VMware Validated Design provides design and deployment guidance to integrate the on-premises SDDC with a VMware cloud solution according to two models.
  • Add an SDDC on VMware Cloud on AWS as a region
  • Use a cloud-based solution for cloud management or operations management in the place of the analog solutions in the on-premises SDDC.
Audience Cloud architects, infrastructure administrators, and cloud administrators.
Supported SDDC Architecture Standard SDDC
Covered use cases
  • VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC as a Region C