vCloud Availability On-Premises Network Requirements

Before you start deploying and configuring the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance, ensure that the required network ports are opened and allow the communication within the on-premises site and the cloud site.

Network Ports Configuration

For the required network ports to be opened for the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance communication in the-premises site, see vCloud Availability Network Ports.

The following diagram shows the direction of the data flow, the data traffic type, and the required network ports for the communication between the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance and the disaster recovery infrastructure.

Deployment Requirements

• In the ESXi hosts, a VMkernel interface can be dedicated for the replication traffic. By default, ESXi handles the replication traffic through its management VMkernel interface. As a good practice, you can separate the management traffic from the replication traffic by creating a dedicated replication VMkernel interface. Use the following tags when creating a VMkernel interface for the replication traffic:

  • Use the vSphere Replication tag to configure the ESXi host for the outgoing replication traffic.
  • Use the vSphere Replication NFC tag to configure the ESXi host for the incoming replication traffic.

  Configure the replication VMkernel interface in its own IP subnet and connect the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance to the same virtual port group. Using this configuration, the replication traffic between the ESXi hosts and the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance stays in the same broadcast domain. As a result, uncompressed replication traffic avoids crossing a router and saves the network bandwidth. For information about configuring a dedicated replication VMkernel interface, see Set Up a VMkernel Adapter for vSphere Replication Traffic on a Source Host in the vSphere Replication documentation.

• If more than one vCenter Server instances exist in the on-premises site:
  • vCenter Server instances dedicated for management operations
  • vCenter Server instances dedicated for resources
  vCloud Availability uses the resource vCenter Server instances to locate and authenticate to resources and create or edit inventory objects. Register the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance with the vCenter Server Lookup service, provided by the Platform Services Controller used by the resource vCenter Server instances.

vCloud Availability Interoperability

Before installing the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance, verify the supported versions of ESXi and vSphere. For the interoperability between vCloud Availability and other VMware products, see VMware Product Interoperability Matrices.