Getting Started
In this article we’ll be introducing you to the basics of vCloud and what you can do to get started with your new Virtual Data Centre.
VMware vCloud Director official user guide
We recommend you read the official VMware vCloud Direct User's Guide for a complete guide and overview.
Logging in for the first time
Each customer has their own unique login URL. The easiest way to find this is either through:
Your welcome email
Login into your Partner Portal and viewing your Virtual Data Center service
The URL format is as follows:
https://vdc.(syd or mel).mhn.net.au/tenant/<vCloud Organisation Name>
Creating Your First vApp & VM
Once logged into the portal, you’ll be presented with your dashboard and a quick menu on the far right hand side. In this quick menu, click on ‘Add vApp’. From here you can either deploy a vApp with our pre-built templates which can be found by changing the ‘Look In’ field to Public Catalog and then selecting the All Templates tab, or you can create a blank vApp and configure as you see fit.
vCloud Director structure
The vCloud structure is broken up into four different layers. These layers are outlined below and serve their own unique purpose.
Your organisation
The organisation is the highest layer of the vCloud structure and can be viewed as the container all under layers sit under. Your organisation can hold multiple Virtual Data Centres, which in turn can hold multiple vApps and VMs. The organisation layer is where you set your user accounts.
Virtual Data Centre (VDC)
The Virtual Data Centre is a self contained environment that sits within your organisation. Each Virtual Data Centre has a pool of resources allocated to it and you can in turn, split these resources amongst your vApps and VMs. A Virtual Data Centre can either be dedicated to a customer or shared with multiple customers, broken up into individual vApps. The choice here is up to you as it will depend on how you’d like to architect the setup of your environment. If you are reselling a Virtual Data Centre we do recommend that you use a seperate VDC for each of your customers, this way the invoice from Hosted Network will have each of your VDC's labeled with your customer's name for easy cross reference.
vApp
A vApp is the next layer within your organisation. In order to create a VM, you’ll first need at least one vApp to act as that VMs container. The purpose of a vApp is to allow several VMs to be grouped together and treated as one. For example, if you have an Active Directory & Remote Desktop servers and each time you need to complete maintenance both need to be restarted, you can use a vApp is implement shutdown/startup rules and priorities to ensure that the Remote Desktop server never starts before the Active Directory server is ready.
VM (Virtual Machine)
The last layer under the organisation, a VM is a virtualised operating system running in your Virtual Data Centre. VMs can be any server or desktop operating system compatible with VMware vCloud and is where you’ll be installing your underlying software.
Image Catalog
We provide a range of preconfigured and ready to run templates that you can deploy to get up and running in minutes. These templates are available in the Public Image Catalog within your web portal and are continuously updated with newer versions of operating systems and software. You can also add your own media and templates by creating your own private catalog and uploading them within the Catalogs tab once logged into the vCloud Management Portal.
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