VCF 9: VCF Operations – Quick Reference

Ravi Kumar S

VCF 9 introduces a new, unified operations model that simplifies how administrators manage and automate the entire VMware Cloud Foundation environment. Instead of relying on multiple legacy tools and fragmented workflows, VCF 9 consolidates Day-0, Day-1, and Day-2 operations into the VCF Operations Management interface.

As part of VCF installation, following components gets deployed:

  1. SDDC Manager (will be soon integrated with VCF Operations appliance itself)
  2. VCF Operations Appliance
  3. Collect Appliance
  4. VCF Operations Logs Appliance (can be deployed later)
  5. VCF Network Operations Appliance (can be deployed later)
  6. VCF Operations Fleet Management

VCF Operations console provides a central management interface for several VCF components, you can perform the following tasks:

  1. Assign VCF Licensing
  2. Configure Identity Providers (Embedded or Identity Broker (separate instance)
  3. Link vCenter instances with vCenter Groups (max 15 vCenters in single group, does not support vCenters in Enhanced Linked Mode)
  4. Monitor the health of Components and Workloads
  5. View Event and Logs (log level configuration, log based alerts, log analysis)
  6. Create, Edit and Import vCenter Tags (tags can be applied consistently across all components, tags already assigned to individual components can be imported to VCF Operations)
  7. Perform Life Cycle Management (deployment of new components, upgrade of existing components, plan upgrades & review and monitor upgrade status, centralized depots)
  8. Monitor Configuration drift on VCF Components (uses vCenter and ESX profiles to ensure components are configured consistently across VCF deployment, configuration templates or profiles will be generated)
  9. Capacity Planning (checking current resources life, creating scenarios for new workloads)
  10. Certificate Management (nondisruptive replacement process, supports various CAs, Certificate expiry notifications & alerts, tags are grouped logically such as management, storage, networking etc.)
  11. Password Management (unified dashboard for management & notification), password policies
  12. VCF Health & Diagnostics (predicts issues, provides recommendations, known issues, monitor operational state & upload logs to support)
  13. Single pane of glass view for Storage, Network, GPU, Security Operations & Management
  14. VCF Chargeback (define & assign pricing policies, generate bills, integration with VCF Automation is required)
  15. Management Pack Builder to bring in data from an external API (no-code content creations, create new resource type, create and assign events to resources, relationship between resources)

Note: For VVF deployment – VCF Operations is still required, however features are limited to license management, monitor the health of components & workloads, view tasks, event & logs and review security configurations, policies and alerts.