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The Virtual Resources menu option displays a summary of your virtual resources with customizable reports. The Summary page displays an overview of all VDCs and VMs, reports for new VMs and deleted VMs, and trending reports for network usage, CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage.
You can manage the following virtual resources:
During VM provisioning, you can associate a VM with a virtual data center (VDC). When you create a service request, you can choose the VDC on which the VM is provisioned. You can view a list of VDCs available for a group and choose the required VDC when provisioning the VM.
You can view available VDCs and their details by choosing vDCs under Virtual Resources.
The VDCs report displays all available VDCs, as well as the following information:
You can view additional details about a VDC by clicking on the row with the VDC and clicking View Details.
Application containers are a templatized approach to provisioning applications for end users. Each application container is a collection of VMware virtual machines (VMs) and/or bare metal servers (BMs) with an internal private network that is based on rules specified by the administrator. An application container can have one or more VMs and BMs and can be secured by a fencing gateway (for example, a Virtual Secure Gateway) to the external or public cloud.
Administrators can create one or more application container templates with the appropriate policies, workflows, and templates. The application container template determines how the application is provisioned for the end user.
You can view all available application containers and all associated VMs, bare metal servers, network tier mappings, L4-L7 services, and contracts. You can view additional details about an application container by clicking the row with the application container and clicking View Details.
For each application container, you can generate summary reports, a detailed report with credentials, and a detailed report without credentials. If you choose to generate a report with credentials, the passwords appear in plain text. The report header displays the service request ID used to create the container.
Note | Generating a report without credentials hides the passwords in the report. |
You can enable and disable power for an application container.
You can decommission an application container that you no longer require. When you decommission an application container, the provisioned VMs are powered off but not deleted.
You can clone an existing application container. Cloning an application container retains all of the settings and configuration data with the VMs that are contained in the original application container.
You can add a VM exclusively to any of the deployed application containers available for you or your group.
Bare metal servers are supported only in APIC containers. You can add a bare metal server to a deployed APIC application container.
Step 1 | Choose Virtual Resources. |
Step 2 | On the Virtual Resources page, click Application Containers. |
Step 3 | Click the application container to which you want to add one or more bare metal servers. |
Step 4 | From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Add BMs. |
Step 5 | On the Add BMs screen, click Add to add a new bare metal server. |
Step 6 | On the Add Entry to Bare Metal Application Components screen, complete the required fields. |
Step 7 | Click Submit. The newly added bare metal server is added to the Bare Metal Application Components list. |
Step 8 | On the Add BMs screen, you can add more bare metal servers or click Submit. |
You can delete an application container that you no longer require. When you delete an application container, you also delete the resources that are provisioned for that application container. When the Delete Container action is initiated, the application container setup is rolled back, and a service request is created.
Step 1 | Choose Virtual Resources. | ||
Step 2 | On the Virtual Resources page, click Application Containers. | ||
Step 3 | Click the application container that you want to delete. | ||
Step 4 | From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Delete Container. | ||
Step 5 | On the
Delete
Container screen, click
Submit.
|
You can view the VM console of a VM associated with an application container.
VNC must be configured on the VM you want to access.
Step 1 | Choose Virtual Resources. |
Step 2 | On the Virtual Resources page, click Application Containers. |
Step 3 | Click the application container for which you want to view the VM console. |
Step 4 | From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Open Console. |
Step 5 | On the Access VM Console screen, choose a VM from the Select VM drop-down list. |
Step 6 | Click Submit. The console for the selected VM opens in a new browser window. |
You can edit the resource limits for an application container. You can specify the number of vCPUs, the amount of memory, the limit for maximum storage, and the maximum number of half-width and full-width servers for the container.
Step 1 | Choose Virtual Resources. |
Step 2 | On the Virtual Resources page, click Application Containers. |
Step 3 | Click the application container for which you want to edit the resource limits. |
Step 4 | From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Edit Resource Limits. |
Step 5 | On the Container Limits screen, check Configure Resource Limit. |
Step 6 | Complete the required fields and click Submit. |
A cost model is used to define the unit level costs of virtual resources such as CPU, RAM, and storage. These costs are used for chargeback calculations of VMs within the virtual infrastructure. Your administrator can map a cost model to an application container template. You can edit the cost model for an application container.
Step 1 | Choose Virtual Resources. |
Step 2 | On the Virtual Resources page, click Application Containers. |
Step 3 | Click the application container for which you want to edit the cost model. |
Step 4 | From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Edit Cost Model. |
Step 5 | On the
Container
Cost Model screen, choose a cost model from the
Cost
Model drop-down list.
The drop-down list displays the available cost models mapped to the application container. |
Step 6 | Click Submit. |
Contracts are policies that enable inter-End Point Group (inter-EPG) communication. These policies are the rules that specify communication between application tiers.
Step 1 | Choose Virtual Resources. |
Step 2 | On the Virtual Resources page, click Application Containers. |
Step 3 | Click the application container to which you want to add a contract. |
Step 4 | Click View Details. |
Step 5 | On the detail page for the application container, click Contracts. |
Step 6 | Click Add Contract. |
Step 7 | On the
Add Contract screen, complete the required
fields, including the following:
|
Step 8 | Click Submit. |
You can perform post-provisioning lifecycle management actions that are permitted by your administrator. You can view the entire list of VMs provisioned using service requests under a user group. You can view the VMs report by choosing VMs under Virtual Resources.
The VMs report lists all available VMs, as well as the following information:
Cloud
VM-ID
VM Label
VM Name
Host Name
IP Address
Image ID
Power State
VM Protected
Group Name
VDC
Category
Provisioned Time
Scheduled Termination Time
Last Status Update
Guest OS Type
VM Annotation
Custom Attributes
Assigned To User
Users Can Access
Users Can Manage
Tags
VMM Cloud
You can view additional details about a VM by clicking the row with the VM and clicking View Details.
Note | The VMs report no longer displays the vCenter VM ID and the vCenter IP fields in End User Portal versions 6.5 and later. |
You can request on-demand inventory collection for a VM.
Step 1 | Choose Virtual Resources. |
Step 2 | On the Virtual Resources page, click VMs. |
Step 3 | Click the row with the VM for which you want to collect inventory. |
Step 4 | From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Inventory Collection Request for VM. |
Step 5 | On the
Request
VM Inventory Collection screen, click
Submit.
The VMs report and the VM's detail page are refreshed with updated information from the inventory collection request. |
You can view all available VM action requests and their details by choosing VM Action Requests under Virtual Resources.
You can also view VM action requests associated with a specific VM by choosing VM Action Requests on the VM's details page.
The VM Action Requests report displays all available VM action requests, as well as the following information:
An image is a template that can be used to create and provision virtual machines (VMs). An image typically includes a specified operating system and a configuration that provides virtual counterparts to hardware components. Images offer a secure way of preserving a VM's configuration that you want to deploy multiple times.
You can view all available VM images and their details by choosing Images under Virtual Resources. The image IDs in the Images report have been assigned to you or your group. You can use an image ID to provision a new VM. Additionally you can select and delete any image IDs that you do not require.
The Images report displays all available images, as well as the following information:
ID
Cloud
Image ID
Parent Node
Datacenter
Guest OS
VMware Tools Installed
VMware Tools Version
VM Version
Platform
Architechture
Number of CPUs
Memory (MB)
Provisioned Disk (GB)
Image Location
CPU Reservation (MHz)
CPU Limit (MHz)
CPU Shares
Memory Reservation (MHz)
Memory Limit (MHz)
Memory Shares
Uncommitted Storage (GB)
Group/User
You can view available clouds and related configuration information. The resource details are at the host node level. You can view the Resource Pools report by choosing Resource Pools under Virtual Resources.
The Resource Pools report displays all available resource pools, as well as the following information: