Methods of Managing vCenter Administration in VMware Cloud on AWS

Option 1 - Discrete vCenter Administration

In this option, you manage separately for On-Premises vCenter and Cloud SDDC in VMware Cloud on AWS. You do not manage from a single console.

This comes in picture when a customer has already one on-premises workloads, and he is also managing other workloads over VMware Cloud on AWS. Using the discrete vCenter administration, customer will manage their workloads in on-prem and cloud SDDC as separate. There will be two different consoles for managing the environment.

If you want to use this feature, then;

• You can simply create new users in SDDC vCenter in VMware Cloud on AWS.
• Add those users to CloudAdminGroup.

Option 2 - Unified Administration

In this option, you manage your On-Premises workloads and Cloud SDDC (VMware Cloud on AWS) from single management console. You need to login to VMware Cloud on AWS console, and you can manage both datacenter from a single span. This is similar like Enhance Linked mode which exist in vCenter, where you link your multiple vCenter to a single console. However, I would say that VMware Cloud on AWS is not limited only to ELM, rather it has some enhance capabilities. This option is known as HLM (Hybrid Linked Mode) which provides the ability to manage On-Prem and VMware Cloud on AWS workloads from single management interface. Refer to HLM section, to know more about this feature.

vCenter Users, and Roles in VMware Cloud on AWS

There are multiple scope of work which is being done by a VMware administration in SDDC cloud, few of them are listed below.

• Deployment, Configuration, and Patching of Cloud SDDC software stack.
• Configuration of AWS Infrastructure
• Adding or Removing Hosts during failure scenario or cluster scaling operations

 Follow below link to see the detailed privileges associated with these groups.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-on-AWS/services/com.vmware.vsphere.vmc-aws-manage-data-center-vms.doc/GUID-DFB3C048-5728-4DE9-9380-7240748875C3.html

DNS Consideration for vCenter

While planning to vCenter Administration, we need to consider the DNS part as well which is a most important thing. Purpose of this configuration is once you make it to private resolution then only the traffic will flow via VPN or DX. If your on-premises is resolving to Public IP of vCenter, then the traffic will go to internet and then HLM will not work. There are two options for DNS configuration, as listed below.

• Either you change the vCenter name resolution to private on VMC SDDC. This will update the private IP on public DNS.

• Manually update your local DNS server to resolve private IP of VMC vCenter.