VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service Getting Started

Introduction

IBM Cloud for VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service (VCFaaS) provides the VMware Cloud Director platform as a managed service. IBM does the configuration, hosting, operations, and lifecycle management of the VMware software so clients can quickly deploy their VMware-based cloud computing environments with simplified management and reduced costs.

IBM Cloud for VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service provides the VMware Cloud Director platform as either a single tenant or multitenant managed service.

• Multitenant VMware provides a cloud-consumption model for you virtual machines, with On-demand and Reserved pricing.
• Dedicated single-tenant VMware sites provide extra isolation and support multiple host configuration options and flexibility for your workload requirements.

Overview of Multitenant 

There are several aspects of managing a VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service (VCFaaS) multitenant instance on IBM Cloud. At a high level, these are the management of the "on IBM Cloud" aspects of a VCFaaS instance and managing the virtual data center (VDC) with VMware vCloud Director (vCloud Director).

Using the IBM Cloud portal to manage aspects of the Virtual Data Center (VDC) is straight forward and includes tasks like:

• adding, removing, and setting limits for compute resources

• adding and removing other services

• adding and removing VDCs

Managing the VDC is done with the VMware vCloud Director web console, which is accessible through the IBM Cloud portal.  From the VMware vCloud Director web console, you can perform common VMware administrative tasks like:

• adding and deleting networks, firewalls, VPNs, and network address translation (NAT) rules

• adding and deleting virtual machines (VMs), virtual applications (vApps), and affinity rules

• managing storage policies and named disks

• and other virtual data center capabilities that are exposed through the vCloud Director web console

Provision a multitenant Virtual Data Center (VDC)

• Login in with your credentials to the https://cloud.ibm.com portal.
• In the top left menu, select VMware -> Resources -> VCF as as Service

Select "Create new

• Select multitenant Virtual Datacenter

• Provide the following information:
  • Populate your VDC Name
  • Choose a IBM VCFaaS Multitenant  Location  (e.g. WDC)
• Choose a network edge: VDCs connect to the public and IBM private networks through edges. Edges can also be used to connect multiple VDC networks together. Currently, four choices of edge types are supported. 
  • Efficiency These edges allocate networking resources that can be used by up to 100 VDCs before another efficiency edge needs to be created. Processors and memory are used from the single tenant site. New edge storage is allocated at an extra cost. Subsequent VDCs, up to 100, can use this edge at no extra cost. This option is suitable for saving resources and costs with independent networking control per VDC.
  • Performance - M This option is suitable when only Layer 2 (L2) through L4 features such as Network Address Translation (NAT), routing, L4 firewall, and L4 load balancers are required. This option is suitable when the total throughput requirement is less than two gigabits per second (Gbps).
  • Performance - L This option is suitable when only L2 through L4 features such as NAT, routing, L4 firewall, and L4 load balancers are required. This option is suitable when the total throughput requirement is in the range of two to 10 Gbps.
  • Performance - XL This option is suitable when the total throughput required is multiple Gbps for L7 and one or more virtual private networks (VPNs) are required.

• Choose your pricing plan
• Choose your consumption limits

• Accept the terms and click "Create"

Manage a multitenant VDC instance

Once your instance has provision it will be visible on the resource page.

• In the top left menu, select VMware -> Resources -> VCF as as Service
• Click the "instance name" entry in the table of VDCs

• Notice the list of Public IPs associated with the VDC. These addresses can be used to assign to individual virtual machines (VMs) provisioned in the VDC or assigned to networks that use network address translation (NAT).
• Click the Add-on services tab.
  • There are two services available:
    • VMware Cloud Director Availability: Simple, secure and cost effective migration tooling
    • Veeam Backup and Replication: Backup up your workload

• Click the Interconnectivity tab.
• On this tab you can setup connectivity to the IBM Cloud Transit Gateway

Congratulations, you have now successfully provisioned a VMWare Cloud Foundation as a Service Multitenant instance.

Related Information

1. IBM Cloud VCFaaS Overview Documentation
2. Configuring a virtual data center in VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service using the VMware Cloud Director Console
3. Creating a VPN between the virtual data center edge gateway and the on-premises VPN gateway
4. Migrating workloads from on-premises and vCenter Server environments to VCF as a Service