VCP-VCF key terms

The centralized management appliance in VMware Cloud Foundation that inventories hosts, creates and manages domains, rotates credentials, manages certificates, and orchestrates lifecycle operations such as bring-up, upgrades, and patching.

The first workload domain created during bring-up. It hosts the platform's shared management components, including vCenter Server, NSX Manager, NSX Edge nodes, and SDDC Manager itself, and supports all other domains.

A logical unit of compute, storage, and network resources, managed by its own vCenter Server and NSX instance, where customer workloads run. Several workload domains can exist alongside the management domain.

A group of NSX Edge nodes that provides north-south routing, firewalling, and connectivity between a workload domain's overlay networks and the physical data center network. It hosts Tier-0 and Tier-1 gateways.

The top-level NSX logical router in a workload domain that peers with the physical network through BGP or static routes, providing the entry and exit point for all north-south traffic.

A tenant-level NSX logical router attached to a Tier-0 gateway. It provides routing, NAT, and firewall services for segments belonging to a specific organization or application within the workload domain.

Software-defined storage bundled with vSphere that pools local disks across hosts in a cluster to present a distributed datastore, using storage policies to define availability and performance characteristics.

The vSphere management service for a domain. It manages ESX hosts, clusters, virtual machines, and storage policies, and is registered with SDDC Manager and with the platform's identity and operations services.

The monitoring and analytics component of VMware Cloud Foundation. It collects metrics from vSphere, NSX, and storage, provides dashboards, capacity analysis, and alerting, and can trigger automated remediation.

The cloud-consumption layer of VMware Cloud Foundation that provides self-service catalogs, blueprints, and infrastructure-as-code APIs so tenants can provision workloads and networks without directly touching vSphere or NSX.

A vSphere cluster capability that runs Kubernetes control planes on ESX hosts, letting platform teams offer self-service Kubernetes namespaces to developers while vSphere manages the underlying compute and storage.

The primary datastore type chosen for a workload domain at creation, typically vSAN or an external NFS or VMFS array. It stores the domain's virtual machines, including its vCenter Server and NSX appliances.

The identity provider bundled with VMware Cloud Foundation. It authenticates users across vCenter, NSX, SDDC Manager, and other components so administrators use one set of credentials per environment.

The first-boot appliance used to deploy a new VMware Cloud Foundation environment. It validates the deployment specification, then builds and configures the management domain, including SDDC Manager.

A spreadsheet template whose completed worksheets are converted into the JSON specification consumed by VCF Installer, capturing host, network, credential, and domain settings for a new environment.

A named range of IP addresses with associated subnet, gateway, and VLAN details that SDDC Manager allocates from when deploying appliances such as vCenter Server, NSX Manager, and NSX Edge nodes.

The process of adding ESX hosts to the SDDC Manager inventory after validating credentials, network connectivity, and compatibility, so they can later be assigned to a workload domain.

The automated, multi-step workflow that builds the management domain from commissioned hosts and a deployment specification, ending with a working SDDC Manager and core management services.

The SDDC Manager function that stores product license keys and assigns them to domains, clusters, or components, reporting on capacity and expiration across the environment.

An SDDC Manager operation that changes the credentials of component service accounts on a schedule, updating stored secrets and dependent services so that access remains consistent.

The SDDC Manager workflow for replacing default certificates on vCenter, NSX, and SDDC Manager with CA-signed ones, including generating certificate signing requests and installing the signed certificates.

A scheduled backup of SDDC Manager's configuration, inventory, and credentials to an external file server; the backup is required to rebuild the appliance and reconnect to existing domains after a failure.

A log aggregation component that ingests syslog and application logs from VMware Cloud Foundation components, indexes them, and provides search, alerting, and long-term retention for troubleshooting.

The built-in health checks in vSAN that test cluster configuration, disks, network, and data integrity conditions, and report findings together with remediation guidance.

A permission model where users and groups are assigned roles, and roles carry privileges on specific objects. In VMware Cloud Foundation it governs access to SDDC Manager, vCenter, and operations tools.

A declarative specification of the exact ESX base image, vendor add-on, and firmware add-on a cluster must run, which vSphere Lifecycle Manager compares hosts against and remediates to.

A vendor-supplied plug-in registered with vSphere Lifecycle Manager that supplies firmware add-ons and coordinates firmware updates on hosts as part of cluster remediation.

A local repository of upgrade bundles created for air-gapped environments. Bundles are downloaded elsewhere and imported so SDDC Manager can perform lifecycle operations without internet access.

A command-line tool that downloads VMware Cloud Foundation bundles from an online depot to a local directory and uploads them to an offline depot or to SDDC Manager.

An automated validation run before an upgrade that inspects health, certificates, credentials, disk space, and compatibility, and blocks the upgrade while blocking issues remain unresolved.

A utility that applies urgent VMware patches to vCenter Server and ESX components between major VMware Cloud Foundation upgrades, keeping the environment supported while the next upgrade is planned.

Restoring a component or the environment to its pre-upgrade state using backups and snapshots taken during the upgrade workflow, used when an upgrade fails or produces unacceptable behavior.

A collected archive of logs, configuration, and diagnostic data from VMware Cloud Foundation components, generated on demand and provided to VMware Support for troubleshooting.

VMware's public database of supported hardware, firmware, guest operating systems, and interoperability combinations, used to verify that hosts, storage, and drivers are supported before deployment or upgrade.

The workflow that removes a host from a workload domain, evacuates or migrates its workloads and data, and returns the host to the free pool for repair, replacement, or reuse.