Does vCD require any connection to any of the esx hosts in vSphere

[mars2k]

Hi I have 2 questions.

1.When creating a cell does vCD have exclusive ownership of vSpher in that cell?  Can you manage vSphere "locally" as well? I'm spit balling here but the resource pools assigned to vCD are managed by vCD and any other resources not assigned to vCD are not part of the cloud or cell and can be manged by vCenter outside of the management layer vCD provides.  Am I right or wrong on that?

2. When managing a resource pool does vCD require any direct communication with ( and therefore require crenditals on ) the host.  Are all management functions ported through vCenter.?

Thanks guys

[TimLawrence]

Hi,

when you say "cell" I presume you mean resource pool.. vCloud has full control over all the resources it creates in the resource pool (and any sub-resource pool). Technically you could create stuff in there outside of vCloud but it would be a very bad idea as vCloud controls the resource pool settings (reservation / limits etc) and you would probably confuse it. If you want to share a cluster then create a Resource Pool just for vCloud and put your other VMs outside of it.

With regards to your second question, vCloud installs an agent on each host (known in vCloud as "preparing" a host). To install this you need the root credentials of the host. vCloud also communicates with vCenter.

Tim