vCenter

In the Ultra Transcenders books

2V0-17.25

Each book explains vCenter in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• Virtual machines

  Infrastructure-as-a-service compute giving complete control of the operating system, making it a fit for lift-and-shift moves and for software relying on OS-level pieces like COM.

• ESX

  VMware's bare-metal hypervisor, installed on each host in a VCF fleet. Up to version 9.0 it was known as ESXi.

• Domain

  A way of grouping workspaces by area of the business, in support of a data mesh approach. Items take on their workspace's domain, letting you filter the OneLake catalog by it, and certain tenant settings can be passed to domain admins; domains have no effect on access permissions.

• VMware Cloud Foundation

  Broadcom's platform for private cloud. It unifies management of NSX, vSAN, vSphere, VCF Automation and VCF Operations as one fleet; VVF, by contrast, lacks automation and cloud management.

• Dedicated

  Running Azure Functions on an App Service plan, which removes the execution time limit and offers VNet integration on Basic and higher tiers.

Related terms

• Add-on licence

  Before vCenter accepts this kind of entitlement, a primary one has to be in place. In 9.0 the extras are vSAN, measured per TiB, and Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA, measured per core.

• Cloud account

  An endpoint plus credentials, for example for vCenter, NSX, VCF, AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, that VCF Operations and VCF Automation (VM Apps) use to gather data or provision resources.

• Cloud proxy

  Also named the VCF Operations collector in the 9.0 installer and design guides. This appliance pulls metrics from vCenter, NSX and similar endpoints and pushes them, one way only, up to VCF Operations.

• Configuration drift

  Mismatch, flagged by VCF Operations, between how vCenter or cluster settings actually look and the desired state stored in a template. Checks can run on a schedule or on request, from the Configuration Drifts page in Fleet Management.

• Configuration template

  Captures the wanted settings of a chosen source vCenter so VCF Operations can compare other vCenter instances with it via policies. Git synchronisation is supported.

• Content library

  Repository in vCenter holding items such as templates, ISOs and OVF/OVA packages; one vCenter publishes it and others subscribe. VCF Automation shares images this way as well.

• Convergence

  In VCF 9.0, adopting a vCenter you already run, with its hosts and optionally Aria products, as the management domain of a brand-new fleet or instance; absent pieces are deployed for you. Enhanced Linked Mode setups are excluded.

• DCUI

  Text console on an ESX host or the vCenter appliance, used to set up networking initially, troubleshoot, and turn on SSH or the ESX Shell.