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Requirements for VMware Shared

Requirements for VMware Shared

VMware Shared is no longer available for new deployments. Existing instances will continue to be supported until 15 January 2025. Ensure that you migrate all your VMware Shared resources to IBM Cloud® for VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service by 15 January 2025. For more information, see End of Support for VMware Shared deployments.

Review the following requirements by considering the IBM Cloud data center location, your workload capacity requirements, and services requirements.

Virtual data center name requirements

The virtual data center name must meet the following requirements:

  • The maximum length is 128 characters.
  • Only alphanumeric, hyphen (-), and underscore (_) characters are allowed.
  • The name must be unique from active virtual data centers within your account. You can create a virtual data center that has the same name as a previously deleted virtual data center.

IBM Cloud data center availability

The VMware Shared deployment has strict requirements on the physical infrastructure. Therefore, you can deploy your virtual data centers only in IBM Cloud data centers that meet the requirements.

The following IBM Cloud data centers are available for VMware Shared deployment.

Table 1. Available IBM Cloud data centers for deployment - Europe
Site Location vSAN support Multizone support
Frankfurt Director 01 Frankfurt 02 None No
Frankfurt Director 01 Frankfurt 04 None No
Frankfurt Director 01 Frankfurt 05 None No
Table 1. Available IBM Cloud data centers for deployment - North America
Site Location vSAN support Multizone support
Dallas Director 01 Dallas 10 vSAN No
Dallas Director 01 Dallas 12 vSAN No
Dallas Director 01 Dallas 13 vSAN No

Services for VMware Shared instances

The following preinstalled services are available for your virtual data center based on your needs.

Service charges are incurred only if you choose to use the service.

Configuration limits for VMware Cloud Director

Review VMware Cloud Director 10.4 Configuration Limits to ensure that you understand configuration limits in VMware Cloud Director.

10,000 vApps per Cloud Director organization

One of the configuration limits in VMware Cloud Director is a maximum of 10,000 vApps per Cloud Director organization. In VMware Shared, it means you cannot have more than 10,000 vApps in a single account in a particular site location since each site location is the same Cloud Director instance. For more information about sites and VMware Cloud Director, see VMware Shared overview.

If you need more than 10,000 vApps in a single account, consider the following options:

  • Increase the number of virtual machines in each vApp.
  • Use a separate account in that region to host more vApps.

The number of VMware Shared instances (or virtual data centers) does not impact this limit.