VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5

5.2 5.1 5.0 4.5
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Operations Guide

Best practices and step-by-step instructions about operating
VMware Cloud Foundation
™ including full-stack shutdown and startup and verifying whether the state of
VMware Cloud Foundation
 is intact after a maintenance operation.
This guide covers all software products and workload domain types that are supported by
VMware Cloud Foundation
 including VMware vSphere® with VMware Tanzu® and VMware vRealize® Suite.
To maintain component integration and avoid operation faults, you follow the specified order and steps to shut down and then start up the management components in
VMware Cloud Foundation
. See Shutdown and Startup of VMware Cloud Foundation.
As a best practice, you verify the configuration and main functions of the
VMware Cloud Foundation
 management components after deployment, upgrade, restore, or disaster recovery. See Operational Verification of VMware Cloud Foundation.
To meet the requirements of your organization for security and compliance for your
VMware Cloud Foundation
 environment including industry compliance standards, you configure manually the password policies of the individual management components in the environment. See Password Policy Configuration for VMware Cloud Foundation.
Because SDDC Manager does not manage certificates for ESXi hosts, if required by the policy of your organization, you manually replace the default host certificates that are signed by the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) with external CA-signed certificates. See ESXi Certificate Management for VMware Cloud Foundation.

Intended Audience

The information in
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Operations Guide
 is intended for data center cloud administrators and operators who are familiar with:
  • Concepts of virtualization and software-defined data centers (SDDCs)
  • Networking and concepts such as uplinks, NICs, and IP networks
  • Hardware components such as top-of-rack (ToR) switches, inter-rack switches, servers with direct attached storage, cables, and power supplies
  • Methods for setting up physical racks in a data center
  • Using VMware vSphere® to work with virtual machines.

Related
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Publications

The VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5 Release Notes lists the software components, new features, compatibility, and known issues in
VMware Cloud Foundation
 4.5.
The
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Planning and Preparation Workbook
 contains the environment specification of your
VMware Cloud Foundation
 deployment. It also provides dynamic sizing guidance.
The
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Design Guides
 explains the design principles of and provides best practices for the management component configuration in a
VMware Cloud Foundation
 environment.
The
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Deployment Guide
 is intended for data center cloud administrators who deploy a
VMware Cloud Foundation
 system in their organization's data center.
The
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Administration Guide
 contains detailed information about how to administer and operate a
VMware Cloud Foundation
 system in your data center.
The
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Lifecycle Management
document describes how to manage the life cycle of a
VMware Cloud Foundation
 environment.
VMware Validated Solutions
 provide technical reference for designing and implementing add-on configurations on top of
VMware Cloud Foundation
 that solve a business use case, such as, central identity management, workload provisioning, vSphere with Tanzu configuration, and others.
You can open these documents from the VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5 Release Notes main page.

VMware Cloud Foundation
 Glossary

See the VMware Cloud Foundation Glossary for constructs, operations, and other terms specific to
VMware Cloud Foundation
.

Update History

This
VMware Cloud Foundation
 Operations Guide
 is updated when necessary.
Revision
Description
15 JUN 2023
You can now use VMware Skyline Health Diagnostics to collect diagnostic data about the management components of
VMware Cloud Foundation
. See Proactive Diagnostics of VMware Cloud Foundation with Skyline Health Diagnostics.
08 JUN 2023
To replace the default ESXi certificates, signed by VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA), with CA-signed ones, you can follow step-by-step UI instructions or use the
VMware.CloudFoundation.CertificateManagement
 PowerShell module. See ESXi Certificate Management for VMware Cloud Foundation.
25 APR 2023
You now use the
VMware.CloudFoundation.PasswordManagement
 PowerShell module for configuring password policies for the management components of
VMware Cloud Foundation
31 JAN 2023
To configure password policies for the management components of
VMware Cloud Foundation
 according to industry compliance standards or unique requirements of your organization, including password expiration, password complexity, and account lockout, you can now follow the step-by-step instructions in Password Policy Configuration for VMware Cloud Foundation.
10 JAN 2023
You can now shut down and start up the management domain and virtual infrastructure (VI) workload domains by using PowerShell. See Shutting Down and Starting Up VMware Cloud Foundation by Using PowerShell.
11 OCT 2022
Initial version.

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