Elastic Provider vDC in 1.5.0

[1Duncan]

vCD 1.5.0 provided us with the ability to create elastic provider vDCs via the Resource Pools tab of System->Manage & Monitor->Provider vDCs->pvDC instance.

This is great because it means we can scale resource without having to create new Org vDCs.

However, I couldn’t find any mention of this new functionality in the 1.5 release notes, nor has the Admin Guide been updated. In fact the Admin Guide now contradicts the text in the Add Provider vDC wizard which states “You can make a Pay-As-You-Go vDC, backed by this Provider vDC, Elastic by adding more than one resource pool”.

I believe this ability is officially supported by VMware but I would like to see that in writing and some documentation around the limitations and implications.

I have experimented with this a little and I notice that while one resource pool is flagged as "Primary", all the vApps I have created so far have ended up in the other one. A minor point perhaps but raises a question that some documentation could hopefully answer.

[ben_c1]

I don't know about the placement algorithm when a PAYG org vDC has multiple resource pools, but the Admin Guide does contain some information about elastic vDCs--

http://pubs.vmware.com/vcloud-director-1-5/admin/GUID-DD1A073A-E230-4F47-8EEA-CE418D8E1152.html

describes the allocation models for org vDCs and states "You can make a Pay-As-You-Go organization vDC elastic by adding multiple  resource pools to its provider vDC."

http://pubs.vmware.com/vcloud-director-1-5/admin/GUID-B48DE20E-E9C2-4CFA-A7B8-2BC6068AFD35.html

describes how to add a resurce pool to a provider vDC so that its PAYG org vDCs can expand.

[1Duncan]

Thanks Ben. I see that now.

The documentation is inconsistent though as http://pubs.vmware.com/vcloud-director-1-5/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#href=admin/GUID-A3D5787...

says "A provider vDC can only include a single resource pool from a single vCenter Server".

And http://pubs.vmware.com/vcloud-director-1-5/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#href=admin/GUID-3C2D7AB...

says "A provider virtual datacenter (vDC) combines the compute and memory resources of a single vCenter Se......"

If I were splitting hairs I would point out some occurences of "Providor vDC" in the document ;-).

I definately think this feature needs more mention than a couple of sentences. I guess if comes back to the related discussion on Limits and Maximums. How Many Resource Pools etc? And it would be nice to know how the pool is chosen.

[pic]

Probably old news by now, but I was just cruising around the web for something related and came across this thread.

Here are a couple of KBs that provide more on this now:

KB 2005982  Advantages of using Elastic vDCs in vCloud Director 1.5

KB 2019531 Resource pool selection process by Elastic vDC in vCloud Director 1.5