VCF Single Sign-On

In the Ultra Transcenders books

2V0-17.252V0-16.25

Each book explains VCF Single Sign-On in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• NSX

  Software that handles networking and security across VCF, covering firewalling, load balancing, NAT, VPCs, overlay segments and Tier-0/1 gateways.

• vCenter

  Management software for VMs, clusters and ESX hosts. Each domain in VCF gets a dedicated one.

• VCF Automation

  Self-service platform in VCF for provisioning VM, Kubernetes and AI workloads. Providers manage regions and tenants in one portal, while tenants handle projects and consumption in theirs.

• VCF Operations

  VCF's console for running the fleet. It covers alerting, monitoring, capacity, reporting, log analysis and licensing alongside fleet management of identity, passwords, certificates and lifecycle.

• Login

  A server-wide security principal used for connecting to SQL Server or an Azure SQL logical server; users inside each database are linked to it. EXECUTE AS LOGIN can't be used in Azure SQL Database.

• 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.

• VCF Identity Broker

  Identity service introduced with VCF 9.0 that signs in users of fleet components by linking VCF Single Sign-On with the company's identity provider. It runs either embedded within vCenter or as a cluster of three appliance nodes.

• Identity provider

  Microsoft Entra ID is one example: a system that keeps identity records up to date and lets applications hand off sign-in, permission checks and logging to it.

Related terms

• Authentication provider

  Chosen once VCF Operations orchestrator is deployed, this is what signs users in: VCF SSO, vSphere or VCF Automation. Because orchestrator also gets its licensing here, VVF deployments usually pick vSphere.