vCloud Director connects to the vCenter Server instance that manages the Edge / Resource pod for storage and compute resources. vCloud Director is also connected to the NSX Manager instance associated with the Edge / Resource pod networking. Figure 8 illustrates the vCloud Director cell design and its association with other Management pod components.
Each cell stores its data in an SQL database that is configured for high availability, following the best practices and recommendations of the database vendor. vCloud Director supports Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases. The most current information about supported databases is available from the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices.
To accommodate temporary transfer storage when content such as Open Virtualization Format (OVF) images of VNFCs are uploaded or downloaded, a shared NFS volume must be accessible by all vCloud Director cells. This shared NFS volume is also used by the servers in the vCloud Director group to exchange configuration and state information.
Each vCloud Director cell has two virtual network interfaces. One interface is used for vCloud Director Web services, such as the user interface and API. The other interface is used for remote console proxy functionality that facilitates lights-out management of VNF Components. The vCloud Director Web interface is used for connectivity to the management network for vCenter Server and NSX Manager. The interfaces for the user, API, and remote console proxy are load balanced using NSX ESG. This allows network separation of the public facing interface from the private management interface.
The vCloud Director integration with vCenter Server allows vCloud Director to manage the pooling of resources, their allocation, and reservation. vCloud Director abstracts the vCenter Server resource management constructs and provides its own view for tenant resource management. CSPs can select one of three allocation models allowing them to assign resources to tenants. This gives CSPs the flexibility to manage the resource of individual OvDCs, depending on the workload resource requirements of that OvDC. These allocation models are briefly described in the KB article Allocation Models for Organizations using vCloud Director.
vCloud Director is closely integrated with NSX for vSphere, which provides tenants with more features and capabilities for managing their VNF networking needs directly from within the vCloud Director Web interface. With VMware vCloud NFV 2.0 all the building blocks for creating secure multitenant VNF networks are in the hands of the tenant. These network services include firewall, network address translation (NAT), static and dynamic routing, load balancing, and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Tenants can provision VXLAN backed logical switches for East-West VNF component connectivity. At the same time, they can deploy NSX ESGs for North-South traffic, as required when connecting to other tenants or to external networks. With this integration, CSPs spend fewer administrative resources configuring and setting up VNFs, reducing the cost of managing the platform.
