vCAC 5.5 Standard Edition - Feature Set

[Kimmo11622]

We currently are running a vCenter 5.5 server with a HA/DRS enabled cluster with hosts running ESXi 5.5. We are looking to integrate vCAC 5.2 with this vCenter to enable 3 main features:-

1. Fast Provisioning (Linked Clones)

2. Lease Times (Auto delete after lease expiration)

3. Simple provisioning of multiple linked clones of a single template

Is this all possible using the vCAC standard edition? I would also be interested if there are any VMware best practices / recommendations for running vCenter VM's and vCAC virtual machines in the same cluster? I assume as these are one and the same this is recommended and supported? we currently use vCD 5.1 in a separate location and VMware advised against mixing vCloud and vCenter VM's in the same cluster

Thanks in advance

Craig

[abhilashhb]

Hi Craig,

vCD can already do the three things you are asking for. Any other particular reason to go with vCAC?

[Kimmo11622]

Hi Abilash,

The main reason is we need to run standard vCenter VM's and vCloud vm's on the same compute resources, which is not a 'recommended' configuration from VMware. As vCD is also being split and vCD is in the future only going to be offered to Service Providers we are keen not to be in a position 12 months down the line when we cannot get any updates for vCD

As the main features that the team requires are such a small part of vCD it seems a bit overkill for the job?

Cheers

[ShibbyB · Accepted solution]

1. Fast Provisioning (Linked Clones) - Yes, you create the VM in vCenter and take a snapshot to be the reference point for the Linked Clone blueprint in vCAC - defaults to 20 maximum clones per source, this can be adjusted with a custom property - MaximumProvisionedMachines

2. Lease Times (Auto delete after lease expiration) - Looks like it is included in Standard edition

3. Simple provisioning of multiple linked clones of a single template - See number one above.

Best Practices around running non-managed vCAC machines in the same vCenter environment as vCAC managed machines. I think you can get into trouble here when you have people doing things outside of vCAC (like provisioning machines that take up datastore space) and then people within vCAC requesting machines hitting the same resources. I would recommend allocating datastores specifically to vCAC reservations that you won't use for machines that are provisioned outside of vCAC to prevent any over allocation issues. With memory I would make sure my allocations within vCAC take into consideration existing workload along with future non-vCAC workloads so that you don't run into contention issues if vCAC is heavily used.

Not sure if this is included in Standard edition, but you can import existing machines using Infrastructure Organizer, which you assign to a person / blueprint / provisioning group / reservation (if you haven't used vCAC this probably doesn't mean much to you) so that all the virtual machines in the environment exist within the vCAC framework. These VM's could reference a blueprint that doesn't have a lease period, so you wouldn't have to worry about vCAC archiving them like your linked clones.

[Kimmo11622]

Thanks Shibby - I will bear in mind the considerations you have put across!