Welcome to Feature Fridays!

So you want to know more about a feature, capability or product, but were too afraid to ask!?

Worry no more! Feature Fridays is an initiative to help enable our partners get the most out of their investment in the VMware Cloud Provider Platform. We’ll cover lots of different aspects of the program, products and capabilities, also discuss new releases and key important things to note.

Hosted by Guy, each week we will release a new video covering a different topic in more depth, interviewing our technical experts and getting to that next level of detail (if I can!) The content will be mostly technical but will also cover services that are feasible with the features. We have tried to keep the content relevant and interesting, but if you have any feedback you can always reach us at vcpp_gtm@vmware.com you can also of course comment on our videos to establish some debate!

Keep an eye out on this blog site to see when a new video is released.

---

NOTE – all future episodes are listed here too, some some may say private or unpublished until they go live (one each Friday!)

---

Feature Fridays Episode 43 – VCD NSX-T Northbound routing capabilities April 16th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Romain Decker (Staff Technical Product Management) to discuss VMware Cloud Director and NSX-T’s new northbound routing capabilities, including the new VRF-lite capability that has removed previous bottlenecks in capacity. NSX-T networking in this capacity is very different from the traditional ways of network and NSX-V, so if you’re looking at NSX-T, I would highly advise you look at this video first!

Feature Fridays Episode 42 – Dell Technologies Cloud Platform + VMware Cloud Director Hands on Labs April 9th 2021

In this video I am joined by Lucas Nguyen and Clive Wenman to discuss the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform (DTCP) and VMware Cloud Director (VCD) and the new Hands-On-Lab (HOL). HOL are a great way to get to see a product in action, and Dell DTCP with VCD is an amazing solution with great potential to be a defacto standard for Cloud Provider public or private cloud solutions. Who wouldn’t want a standard VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) SDDC with a building block unit like vxRail, with VCD on top making the whole solution multi-tenanted and extensible?

Feature Fridays Episode 41 – Cloud Services from Cloudist Solutions April 2nd 2021

In this video I’m joined by Jasenko Masic and Robert Brink from Cloudist Solutions, a Cloud Provider Distributer in Sweden. Cloudist Solutions have an interesting business model being a distributer of VMware Cloud infrastructure services and other solutions from a custom developed portal and VMware Cloud Director. Delivering VMware Cloud Director as a Service (as well as all the plugin services, Disaster Recovery as a Service, Bitnami applications etc), to other Cloud Providers to be able to offer to their end customers, as a business model, is an area of growth. More and more smaller traditional providers are looking to other providers to deliver the infrastructure and applications for them, so they can focus on the service and their specialization.  Watch this session to find out more about how Cloudist Solutions in particular has created their offerings and how this model is working for them.

Feature Fridays Episode 40 – What’s new in Object Storage Extension 2.0 March 26th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Joerg Lew (Staff Technical Product Manager) to discuss what new capabilities are available in Object Storage Extension 2.0. This includes covering Native S3 support, AWS tenant account creation/re-use, Object Lock support, Bucket policy UI support, Ceph support and much more. Join this session to find out more about how you can offer S3 Object Storage from within VMware Cloud Director.

Feature Friday Episode 39 – Rubrik Data Management for Cloud Director  March 19th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Tim Hynes, Solution Specialist and software engineer from Rubrik. We will discuss the holistic approach Rubrik has with policy automation for backup, replication and archival for VMware Cloud Director. Rubrik delivers Data Protection services across hybrid clouds supporting tenant self service from their Cloud Director plugin.

Feature Friday Episode 38 – Cloud Director service Business Opportunity Calculator March 12th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Amith Vijayanand a business analyst and Product Marketing Manager in our Cloud Provider Business Unit at VMware. We are showcasing the new opportunity calculator for Cloud Director service, available to all partners here. The idea of this calculator is to be able to calculate what your opportunity could be and what your business case looks like using VMware Cloud on AWS and Cloud Director service.

Feature Friday Episode 37 – Cohesity Data Management with VMware Cloud Director March 5th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Chris Colotti, Field CTO at Cohesity to discuss the VMware Cloud Director integration for Cohesity Data Management as a Service offerings, primarily backup and restore. Cohesity is a multi-tenant solution that maps to existing VCD customer orgs to be able to offer them different tiers of service for their data management service.

Feature Friday Episode 36 – Veeam Backup and Restore in VMware Cloud Director (service) Feb 26th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Andy Sturniolo, Veeam Solutions Architect and Matt Lloyd, Director of Global Alliances at Veeam. We are discussing the Veeam backup and recovery solutions with VMware Cloud Director and VMware Cloud Director service. The new updated Veeam VCD plugin for the VCD extensibility framework provides support for VMware Cloud Director-aware backup and restore operations across VM’s, vApps, guest and file systems!  It also supports using Veeam Cloud Connect replication directly into VMware Cloud Director customer organization virtual data centers. This enables cloud service provider partners and tenants alike, to take advantage of a single user experience with the extensibility enhancements VMware has built into the platform including single-sign-on.

Feature Friday Episode 35 – Migrate to VCD/CDs with PrimaryIO Feb 19th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Lorenzo Salhi founder of PrimaryIO, and Sumit Kapoor Technical Director of PrimaryIO to discuss the newly announced support for Cloud Director and Cloud Director service. PrimaryIO is now tested and verified for cloud migration use cases from on-premises to Cloud Director and Cloud Director service destinations, with warm migration coming soon. Using a customer side plugin, customers can migrate their on-premise virtual machines to their customer org in VMware Cloud Director on the provider target site.

Feature Friday Episode 34 – NSX-V to T Migration Tool 1.2 update Feb 12th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Romain Decker (Staff Technical Product Management) to discuss the new updated NSX-V to NSX-T migration tool – version 1.2. The NSX-V to NSX-T migration tool provides parallel migration to a new NSX-T environment on a org by org basis, it is the only tool that understands VCD constructs and is capable of migrating and converting functionality from NSX-V to NSX-T and NSX Advanced Load Balancer from Avi. 1.2 of the tool includes many more additional capabilities for more complex customer environments. Watch to find out more.

Feature Friday Episode 33 – Terraform vCloud Director Provider 3.1 and NSX-T Feb 5th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Joerg Lew (Staff Technical Product Manager) and Romain Decker (Staff Technical Product Management) to discuss Terraform vCloud Director Provider 3.1 release and NSX-T support. Using Terraform makes a lot of sense to deliver infrastructure services for your customers, but also for your customers to drive their own infrastructure too. 3.1 of Terraform vCloud Director Provider 3.1 was released in December 2020 and now has support for NSX-T edges.

Feature Friday Episode 32 – VMware Cloud Director APIs Jan 29th 2021

In this video I’m joined by Benoit Serratrice, Staff Cloud Solutions Architect at VMware to discuss VMware Cloud Director APIs and SDKs. Automation is key for our providers to maintain volume and reduce operating expenses. Using the VMware Cloud Director APIs various functionality is available across different API types as we move into a consolidated API ongoing and in the future. Watch this session to understand some of the capabilities of the APIs available and the corresponding SDK coverage of the APIs, so you can make the right decision and save time programmatically automating your cloud solution.

Feature Friday Episode 31 – Cloud Director Availability 4.1 Service Monitoring Jan 22nd 2021

This week I’m joined by Mariush Minkov, Senior Product Manager for VMware Cloud Director Availability to discuss monitoring aspects available to tenants and providers for their DRaaS service. In 4.0 we introduced monitoring capability for providers (Syslog & VCD events), and now in 4.1 this is extended to tenants with eMail, there are UI and API metrics that can be monitored and SLA profiles to control the offerings. Monitoring the SLA profiles that are being consumed by each replication or each tenant is key for providers to tier their offering for tenant’s differing workload criticality. Find out what is available and what best practices you should consider setting up and monitoring your DRaaS offerings

Feature Friday Episode 30 – Cloud Director Availability 4.1 update Jan 15th 2021

This week I’m joined by Mariush Minkov, Senior Product Manager for VMware Cloud Director Availability. We will be discussing the great new capabilities of the solution, covering improved notifications, encrypted Cloud to Cloud Disaster Recovery as a service, improved tenant experience, new single pane of glass deployment, public API improvements, new backup and restore capabilities and much more. 4.1 is out now and ready for you to download. It is the simplest solution for providing self service Disaster Recovery as a service and self service free migration from customer premise to VMware Cloud Director cloud. Find out more on the product page https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-director-availability.html 

Feature Friday Episode 29 – Cloud Director Availability Migrations Jan 8th 2021

This week I’m joined by Nikolay Patrikov Technical Product Manager at VMware to cover what VMware Cloud Director Availability can provide regarding migration. Did you know that migration jobs are free for our Cloud Provider partners? VMware Cloud Director Availability supports, cold and warm migrations and can be easily configured to use Layer 2 stretch networking as well to minimise any workload changes and reduce risk. VMware Cloud Director Availability migration is incredibly simple, customers can even run it themselves from their vsphere console without any need for training.

Feature Friday Episode 28 – VMware Cloud Director Availability service design December 18th 2020

In this video I’m joined by Mariush Minkov (Product Manager for VMware Cloud Director Availability – VCDA) to discuss something that every service provider needs to address at some point – how to productize you Disaster Recovery as a Service solution. How should the product be offered, how can it be metered, what tiering can you do and how is this matched through metering and monitoring, how are other providers doing it today…..

Feature Friday Episode 27 – VMware Cloud Director 10 2 UI improvements December 11th 2020

In this video I’m joined by Joerg Lew (Technical Product Manager) and Martin Marinov (Cloud Director Engineering, UI Architecture) to cover VMware Cloud Director (VCD) 10.2 UI improvements; Guided Tours, Advisories and Global Searches. The team take us through these UI updates, their capabilities and their limitations. Add more efficiency to your VCD environment with these great new features!

Feature Friday Episode 26 – App LaunchPad 2.0 December 4th 2020

In this video I’m joined by Joerg Lew (Technical Product Manager) to cover App Launchpad 2.0. The recent update to App Launchpad has created some amazing new opportunities for our Cloud Provider partners. Now providers can deliver helm chart applications into CSE managed Kubernetes clusters, driving more growth and more dev-cloud relevance. VMware Cloud Marketplace is supported which includes the now free (to VMware Cloud Partners who sign the MSP agreement) Bitnami community catalog applications as well as 3rd party applications all delivered with a new easy sync pull mechanism. Lots more capabilities like a public API, support for custom applications, new management enhancements like app categories and better catalog management are all discussed and shown.

Feature Friday Episode 25 – Centralized Point of Management (CPOM) November 27th 2020

In this video I’m joined by Joerg Lew (Technical Product Manager) to cover VMware Cloud Director Centralized Point of Management. Although this feature has been around for quite sometime, it is a particularly nice capability to save a provider time and money and give the tenant a single access and control plane to all their managed, hosted or on-premise private clouds and public clouds all in one place. As more and more customers seek the additional security, compliance and control that dedicated private cloud provides and as more Hyper-converged solutions hit the market, this makes a really nice offering for a provider to deliver any cloud type, manage it anywhere and all through VMware Cloud Director.

Feature Fridays Episode 24 – Monetizing vRealize Operations November 20th 2020

In this video I’m joined by Joerg Lew (Technical Product Manager) and Brandon Gordon (Technical Marketing Architect for vRealize Operations) and we are covering vRealize Operations and how you as a Cloud Provider can use vRealize Operations and various features available to generate new monitoring service revenue opportunities. Unlike the last Feature Friday where we covered vRealize Operations, this session dives deeper into vRealize Operations than focusing on VMware Cloud Director Tenant App integration.

Feature Fridays Episode 23 – Tenant App 2.5 update November 13th 2020

This week I’m joined by In this episode I’m joined again by Joerg Lew and Dattathreya Sathyamurthy Hassan, Product Line Manager for the Tenant App to discuss the new 2.5 update. There are some great new updates in the reporting capabilities for custom reports as well as alert customization, also some improvements in metering and coverage has been increased. Watch this Feature Friday here to find out more!

Feature Fridays Episode 22 – NSX-T Networking and Data Center Groups November 6th 2020

This week I’m joined by Romain Decker (Director of Technical Product Management) to discuss a NSX-T networking capabilities and particularly focus on Data Center Groups and the what benefits can be obtained using them.

Episode 21 – Feature Friday Episode 21 – NSX-T VRF Lite with VCD 10.2 October 30th 2020

This week I’m joined by Romain Decker (Director of Technical Product Management) to discuss a new NSX-T capability that is now available in VMware Cloud Director 10.2 – VRF Lite. Watch the Feature Friday here to find out more about how you can use VRF lite capability to help address scale so you can support more customers per T0 and configure per tenant routing isolation all from VMware Cloud Director!

Episode 20 – VMware Cloud Director Storage Principles October 23rd 2020

This week I’m joined by Ken Lamoreaux  (Director of Technical Product Management) to discuss VMware Cloud Director storage. Ken has a wealth of practical knowledge in VMware Cloud Director and discusses from the ground up the storage presentation, management and controls available in Cloud Director, including the new Cloud Director 10.2 functions for IOPs limits and quotas.

Episode 19 – NSX-T Advanced Load balancer October 16th 2020

This week we discuss the new NSX Advanced Load Balancer from Avi Networks the parity functionality in it’s basic form included in the Flex Core and additional capabilities. With VMware Cloud Director 10.2 there is an initial capability with the Advanced Load Balancer and this will grow over time.

Episode 18 – NSX-V to NSX-T migration tool for VMware Cloud Director October 9th 2020

NSX-T is a core component in VMware Cloud Director and it is essential that Cloud Providers start to consider migration to the platform. The Cloud Services Business Unit is here to support you plan and action the migration with a NSX-V to NSX-T migration tool. Learn more about this from Romain Decker, our resident NSX expert.

Episode 17 – VMware Cloud Director multi-site capabilities October 2nd 2020

VMware Cloud Director is a versatile hybrid infrastructure and service delivery platform. Connecting multiple sites is a key feature of hybrid management and VMware Cloud Director makes this easy. Watch this session to learn how to configure multi-site associations so your tenants can get the best UI experience possible from your multiple VMware Cloud Director instances.

Episode 16 – VCD Service Designs September 25th 2020

This week we are covering some of the service concepts with VMware Cloud Director, whether you offer a full self service public cloud, dedicated private or shared infrastructure service you will see in this session what’s important to consider in managed services and what components of the VMware stack you will need in your cloud operating model.

Episode 15 – VCD Multi-Factor Auth with Azure September 18th 2020

I’m delighted to be joined by Thomas Paulsen from Akquinet in Germany We will quickly run through how simple and easy it is to setup tenants to access VMware Cloud Director Tenant UI using their Azure login and multi-factor authentication that their Azure Active Directory is configured to use

Episode 14 – Cloud Director Advanced UI plugin sandboxing September 11th 2020

Joerg and myself are joined by Jeff Moroski (Staff Engineer from our software engineering group for VMware Cloud Director), and we walk through some of the more complex aspects of development, integrating other products into VCD and handling things like authentication and configuration. Jeff also steps you through the Cloud Director developer sandbox he has created (available to all, read more here) and more.

Episode 13 – Cloud Director UI plugin framework and iFrames – learn how to customize your instance! September 4th 2020

We are covering all aspects of VMware Cloud Director UI plugins and iFrames as well as context menu customization. Cloud Director is an incredibly flexible solution allowing you the provider to have a single jump point for your customers to access all your services. So watch this session to learn how you can get started and make VMware Cloud Director your one-stop shop for your customers.

Episode 12 – VMware Cloud Director 10.1 Hands on Lab August 28th 2020

In this episode I’m joined by Joerg Lew and we wanted to show you the new VMware Cloud Director 10.1 Hands on Labs, as they are an extremely useful resource for training and demos. Hands on Labs have been around a while now, but this lab is new and features all of the great capabilities 10.1 has on offer including; centralized point of management, container and object storage service extensions, tenant app and more. This will be especially useful to those of you attending VMworld sessions regarding VMware Cloud Director.

Episode 11 – vRealize Operations for Cloud Providers August 21st 2020

In this episode I’m joined by Joerg Lew. and Brandon Gordon (Technical Marketing Architect for vRealize Operations) and we cover vRealize Operations and how you as a Cloud Provider can use vRealize Operations to generate new monitoring service revenue opportunities with VMware Cloud Director and without.

Episode 10 – VMware Cloud Director Terraform Provider August 14th 2020

In this episode I’m joined by Joerg Lew. If you haven’t heard about VCD Terraform provider, where have you been?! It’s a fantastic way to deliver infrastructure without leaving your coding environment, use it to generate new infrastructures, delete old ones or modify existing components.

Episode 9 – Advanced Pricing Constructs August 7th 2020

In this episode I’m joined again by Joerg Lew and Dattathreya Sathyamurthy Hassan, Product Line Manager for the Tenant App. Learn how you can use the Tenant App to deliver pricing the way you need it. There are lots of options and capabilities for pricing your services and VMware Cloud Director services, learn more about this today.

Episode 8 – What is Tenant App? July 24th 2020

In this episode I’m joined again by Joerg Lew (he’s been brilliant in working with me on these as you may have noticed!) and Dattathreya Sathyamurthy Hassan, Product Line Manager for the Tenant App. We will explore what the Tenant App in VMware Cloud Director is all about; how it is deployed, what it needs to work and what you can publish to dashboards for your tenants.

Episode 7 – Tenant App Dashboards July 24th 2020

For this episode I am joined again by Joerg Lew (Staff Technical Product Manager at VMware). We cover what dashboards there are in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant App, how they behave and what can be offered. The Tenant App has gone through recent improvements and the monitoring and metering data it provides makes a great additional service for your customers.

Episode 6 – VMware Cloud Director Flex consumption model July 17th 2020

For this episode I am joined by Julian Da Silva (Senior Cloud Solutions Architect). We will run through what the Flex model is VMware Cloud Director, lets clear up the confusion! Flex is an awesome way to provide the best of both worlds, allocation and reservation models.

Episode 5 – Developer-Ready Cloud July 10th 2020

For this episode I am joined again by Joerg Lew (Staff Technical Product Manager at VMware). We will run down the developer ready capabilities that you can offer to your tenants via VMware Cloud Director, our core service delivery platform

Episode 4 – VMware Cloud Director Custom Branding July 3rd 2020

For this episode I am joined again by Joerg Lew (Staff Technical Product Manager at VMware). We will learn how you can use your own custom branding and themes in VMware Cloud Director to make the solution look and feel like your own portal and service interface for tenants.

Episode 3 – VMware Cloud Director Container Service Extension June 26th 2020

For this episode I am joined again by Joerg Lew (Staff Technical Product Manager at VMware). Today we cover VMware Container Service Extension for VMware Cloud Director. Learn how you can deliver Kubernetes Clusters as a Service and utilise the CSE capabilities and additions to deliver upgrades and management of these Clusters. Watch it here

Episode 2 – Bitnami and App Launchpad June 19th 2020

For this episode I am joined again by Eiad Al-Aqqad (Lead Solution Engineer at VMware). Together we cover the new Bitnami integrated capabilities to VMware Cloud Director and the exposing of these applications in the App Launchpad Cloud Director plugin! Watch it here

Episode 1 – VMware Cloud Director – Service Extensions June 12th 2020

For this week I am joined by Joerg Lew (Staff Technical Product Manager at VMware). Together we will run through vRealize Orchestrator functionality underpinning the Service Extension capabilities in VMware Cloud Director! Watch it here

---

Now, it’s Friday 😊  and the weekend is almost here! Maybe it’s around lunch time wherever you are in the world? So go and grab something to eat 🥪  or a cup of coffee ☕️ and settle in to a 30-40 minute run down about VMware Cloud Provider technology capabilities.

Enjoy!