For businesses seeking greater autonomy and control over their virtual infrastructure without relying on a Cloud Service Provider (CSP), VMware’s vCloud Director (vCD) is the optimal choice. With its ability to self-manage virtual applications (vApps), companies can build and modify their own virtual environments, as well as a large number of previously labor-intensive projects, without the help of a CSP. For companies looking for CSPs that can provide a self-service cloud experience, considering working with a CSP that integrates vCD becomes even more important.
When considering several aspects of vCD and its benefits, building a private hosting environment is a worthwhile first step. With vCD, end-users can upload their vApps to a catalog, which they can then use to modify or copy. This can be easily repeated without the involvement of a CSP.
So why is this important?
Even the best service providers need time to implement changes to their company’s virtual infrastructure, so in a sense, what vCD is achieving here is eliminating the middleman. These self-service features allow the IT department to work more freely and respond to ever-changing business needs in a short time.
With vCD, businesses can create their own vApps when building a hosting environment, even from scratch, or they can develop vApps from pre-made templates from CSPs. CSPs with vCD as part of the solution will have a catalog of pre-built virtual machines that businesses can choose from at the outset. This offers several benefits: companies can rely on these pre-built vApp templates to modify and refine them to suit their needs, then upload the catalogs or hosting environments without relying on the CSP.
In addition, vCD allows users to upload ISO images or Disc images directly to the virtual environment. All applications can now be deployed to the company’s hosting environment without the need for a CSP. This saves a significant amount of time and manpower for businesses that need to quickly and easily migrate software from one virtual machine to another. Additionally, it frees up time for “what if” scenarios that would be impossible to explore without the self-service aspect of vCD.
Finally, another important benefit of vCD is its flexible automatic power-on and power-off functionality, which enhances the self-managed virtual cloud computing experience. There are countless reasons why businesses might need to power on and off frequently, so being able to do this without contacting a CSP will allow the IT department to process requests much faster. This might sound insignificant at first, but this feature is included to allow companies the freedom to work in their hosted environment as independently as possible, which is key to the innovation that vCD offers to cloud end users.
Simply put, vCloud Director changes how businesses can access virtual resources, offering several advantages in the process. The self-service aspect of vCD eliminates the need to wait for CSPs to create or manage resources, instead providing catalog-based services accessed through an electronic portal. This increased accessibility improves business agility, reduces costs, and empowers companies with the self-managed virtual environment they provide.
Source: Infinitely Virtual
