VMware vSphere

Hi everyone

I am currently working for a company that have a MSP looking after their VMware environment. They have installed vCloud Director. Now, I am unable to add interfaces to VM's in the vCloud director, but know that this is possbile with vCenter. When I challenged it they gave me this explanation:

QUOTE

This isn't really an option unfortunately as this would leave the vcentre database in an inconsistent state. Editing the configuration directly through vcentre isn't supported and doing this would invalidate support with VMWare. Also this could have a knock effect of causing problems with adding future isolation networks, and also could even cause problems with vmotion or general infrastructure stability.

UNQUOTE

Now, as I dont have extensive experience with vCloud Director, but do with vCenter, can anybody tell me how true this is and whether it should still be possible to make the changes in vCenter?

Thanks in advance

Kobus

Ideally what should have happened is you have two vcenters.

The first vCenter is to manage the vCloud server Infrastructure and the second vCenter should be integrated with vCloud Director and used to manage the vCloud environment. So any changes done in a vCloud environment are done via the vCLoud director console that then uses orchestration and vCenter to perform the tasks required - create a network, organisation, vapp ..etc.

You can import VM's as vApps from an existing VMware environment into vCloud Director - may be a way around your issue.

Thank you for the answer, but what I really want to know is:

if I do do administration via the vcenter server will it mess up the environment.

can i also use the vcenter to do administration like adding interfaces to vm's if the option is greyed out in vcloud director.

Thanks

Kobus

I would advise against it - I have found you can perform some admin functions and it has no effect and other ones can cause uncertain results. The recommended approach is to use vcloud director.