Description
A Virtual Data Centre is the management environment that acts as a container for many virtual server. Just as a physical data building would house numerous racks containing servers, a virtual data center is a virtual location that houses numerous virtual servers. It offers a pool of virtualized resources, which are then available to your organization. This means instead of one virtual operating system, you have an entire virtual environment that contains many virtual servers. Those resources include compute, memory, storage and bandwidth.
Virtual Datacenters are hosted in Zettagrid and are based on VMware vCloud® technology, which provides full compatibility with any VMware environment. The solution is built on open standards with OVF packaging for the transport of workloads and interoperability, with additional support for the VMware vCloud API.
Like a regular data center, a VDC provides computing capabilities that enable workloads of business apps and activities, such as:
- File sharing.
- Email operations.
- Productivity apps.
- CRM and ERP platforms.
- Database operations.
- Big data.
- AI and machine learning.
- Communication and collaboration apps.
The main upside of virtual data centers is the ability to add or remove capacity without having to set up or take down hardware. Every abstracted component runs on the provider’s virtual machine (VM), and the client pays the usage on a pay-as-you-use basis.
Components
A Virtual Datacenter contains public and private catalogs of VM templates so you can build new virtual machines quickly, or upload VMs that are already running in your internal environment. You can also build virtual applications (vApps) within your Virtual Datacenter. A vApp is used when you have an application that requires more than one VM, custom security and/or networking settings, custom startup parameters and want the application to be stored and provisioned from a catalog.
vApps
A vApp is the next layer within the Data Centre. A vApp is collection or container of virtual machines. You may have five VMs for messaging and collaboration, Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Server, Client Access Server, Unified Messaging Server, Hub Transport Server and Edge Transport Server. You can group them together to manage the whole messaging platform. For example, to start and shutdown VMs in a particular order to ensure correct operation.
VMs
VMs are the basic building blocks of Zettagrid. They can be servers, desktops or any operating system that can be virtualized. We sell pre-packaged VM’s as Cloud Servers but in a Data Centre you get access to our Catalogue for you to pick and build yourself.
The Image Catalogue
The Image Catalogue is a library software media (either ISO or OVF files) available to you to build VMs and install software. When you purchase an operating system software license online, say Microsoft Windows 2016, we will make that install media available to you. Linux distributions are available freely straight away.
You can add your own media and vApps to the Catalogue by uploading ISOs via the VMware vCloud management interface.
Management
A Data Centre is managed from within the Zettagrid vCloud website. Your login credentials and availability zone link can be found in My Account.