Soon after the release of vCloud Director 9.0, VMware has released the replacement for vCloud Connector, a new tool named vCloud Director Extender.

vCloud Director Extender enables a Tenant to cold or warm migrate its workloads from vSphere to a vCloud Director based Public Cloud. All the easy steps are wizard-driven and the Tenant has also the option to leverage the automatic creation of a L2VPN connection that can stretch the networking between on premises and the vCloud Director Cloud.

vCloud Director Extender works with vCloud Director 8.20.x and vCloud Director 9.0

You can read the Release Notes for version 1.0 here.

In this first post about vCloud Director Extender, I’ll guide you through the necessary steps to configure the vCloud Director Extender Service from a Service Provider perspective.

vCloud Director Extender Architecture

Before to start, I want to show you the architecture of the Service:

On the Provider Side, we have the following components:

• vCloud Director Extender: the Virtual Appliance that you download and deploy, known as “CX Cloud Service”. After its deployment and configuration, it is used to provide setup and configuration of the overall CX Service.
• Cloud Continuity Manager (aka “Replication Manager”): this Virtual Appliance is deployed by the CX Cloud Service and its role is to oversee the work done by the Replicator.
• Cloud Continuity Engine (aka “Replicator”): this Virtual Appliance is deployed by the CX Cloud Service and its role is to manage the VMs replication between the Tenant’s vSphere environment and the Service Provider’s vCloud Director. The Replicator leverages the new H4 Replication Engine.

On the Tenant side, we only need vCloud Director Extender and the Cloud Continuity Engine.

Let’s start now with the installation and configuration steps on the Service Provider side.

vCloud Director Extender Service Provider Setup

The first step is to access myVMware Website and to download the vCloud Director Extender OVA file, located under the “Drivers & Tools” section of the VMware vCloud Director 9.0 download page.

Following the “Go to Downloads” link you’ll find the vCloud Director Extender 1.0.0 download page.

The next step is to deploy the OVA file we just downloaded. Select the target vCenter (tipically the Management Cluster vCenter) and select “Deploy OVF Template”.

Choose “Browse” to select a local file.

Choose the OVA file you download previously from the myVMware Website and select “Open”. Once you’re back on the Select Template page, click “Next”.

Choose a name for the vCloud Director Extender Virtual Appliance as you want it to appear in your vCenter inventory, then click “Next”.

Select a Target Cluster/Host and click “Next”.

Click “Next” on the Review details page.

Click “Accept” on the EULA page after reading it, then click “Next”.

Select a virtual disk format, a VM storage policy and a target datastore for the Virtual Appliance, then click “Next”.

Select a destination Network (PortGroup) for the Virtual Appliance, then click “Next”.

In the “Customize Template” tab, you’ll set all the Virtual Appliance Parameters.
In the Service Provider environment, based on vCloud Director, you must choose the deployment type “cx-cloud-service“.

Click “Finish” after having reviewed your configuration, to deploy the Virtual Appliance.

vCloud Director Extender Service Provider Setup

Once deployed, you can access the vCloud Director Extender Virtual Appliance via https on the configured IP Address.
You will be presented with the Cloud Service Setup page.
Enter your Local or vCenter (SSO) credentials to access the application and start the configuration wizard.

Select “SETUP WIZARD” to start the Service configuration.

In Step 1, you’ll enter the parameters needed to connect to the Management vCenter. Then click “Next”.

In Step 2, provide the parameters needed to connect to your vCloud Director instance, then click “Next”.

In Step 3, provide the parameters needed to connect to your Resource vCenter(s), then click “Next”.

Wait for the “Successfully linked Resource vCenter” confirmation message, then click “Next”.

In Step 4, specify the parameters needed to create the Replication Manager Virtual Appliance, then click “Next”.

You will see a progress bar indicating the Replication Manager creation status.

In Step 5, set the Root password for the Replication Manager Appliance, specify the Public Endpoint URL needed to reach the Service (optional, only needed if the Appliance is behind a Proxy/NAT), then click “Next”.

Wait for the activation confirmation message, then click “Next”.

In Step 6, specify the parameters needed to create the Replicator Virtual Appliance, then click “Next”.

You will see a progress bar indicating the Replicator creation status.

In Step 7, set the Root password for the Replicator Appliance, specify Lookup Service URL and credentials for the Resource vCenter and the Public Endpoint URL needed to reach the Service (optional, only needed if the Appliance is behind a Proxy/NAT), then click “Next”.

Step 8 will conclude the Wizard. Click “Finish”.

vCloud Director Extender – Service Provider L2VPN Server Setup

The last step to enable the Service, only necessary if L2 stretching is needed between the on premises environment and vCloud Director, is to configure the L2VPN Service on the target Organization Virtual Datacenter(s) Edge Gateway(s).
To create L2VPN connections, you need to convert the Edge Services Gateway(s) to Advanced and grant the needed rights to the vCloud Organization.
You can read one of my previous posts, Self Service NSX Services in vCloud Director, to understand how this works and how to complete this part of the configuration, if needed.

At this stage you can configure the L2VPN Server on the Tenant Edge Gateway (this can be done by the Service Provider or can be delegated to the Customer).

When you configure an L2VPN Server, you must configure a Peer Site. You’ll configure a dummy Peer Site at this stage, just to conclude the Setup on the Tenant side. We’ll could leave this Peer site disabled because we won’t use it, it will be vCloud Director Extender on the Tenant side to configure the needed Peer Sites on this Edge Gateway.

This concludes the Service Provider side of the vCloud Director Extender Service configuration.
In the next post I’ll show you how to configure the CX Service on the Tenant side.