In our last post of this series we have seen how to  Create and Configure org vDC. Now since Org vDC have been setup, next task is to create some vApps in the organization. But before creating vApps there must be catalogs defined.

What is catalog?

A catalog is a container for vApp templates and media files in an organization. Organization administrators and catalog authors can create catalogs in an organization. Catalog contents can be shared with other users in the organization and can also be published to all organizations in the vCloud Director installation.

There are 2 types of catalogs available within vCloud Director:

1: Public: Public catalogs are created for sharing with many/all organizations within a vCloud infrastructure. Organization administrators from any organization in the vCloud Director can view the vApp templates and media files in a public catalog and copy those files to a catalog in their organization for use by their members.

2: Organization(Private): Organization catalogs are per/organization and are local to them. Org catalogs include vApp templates and media files that you can share with other users in the organization. If a system administrator enables catalog publishing for your organization, you can publish an organization catalog to create a public catalog.

In this post we will look for how to create and publish Public catalogs.

Before creating a public catalog there must be an organization created and that organization must have given rights by system administrator to publish catalogs so that other organization can see it and deploy templates from that catalog.

In my home lab I haven’t created any such organization so we will start with creating organization first and then creating/publishing catalogs.

Creating Organization and assigning rights to publish catalogs

From Home tab click on create organization and follow the wizard.

First you have to chose a name for your organization. In my home lab i have chosen Public. Fill up organization full name and description and hit next.

Configure the LDAP settings for this organization.

You can add local user to your organization if you wish. It is good idea to create at least one local user for an organization so that if the LDAP server is down even then you will not loose management capabilities.

Hit next to continue. This screen is important. Here you define whether or not an organization has rights to publish the catalogs. If “Allow sharing catalogs to other organizations” is selected it means it is public catalog and will be visible to either all or some selected organizations.

In next screen setup the SMTP server details

Next is to define policies for this organization.

On Ready to Complete page review your settings and hit finish.

Now open this organization by double clicking on it and go to Administration tab. Under user section you can add different users and can assign different roles to them.

Now we will provide resources to this organization. So the next task is creating the Org vDC. Select the organization “Public” and hit next.

Select the provider vDC. It will show you the current utilization of the provider vDC resources.

Select the allocation model. In my home lab i have chosen Reservation Pool model.

Allocate the resources to the org vDC.

Now since org vDC has been created. We will now create catalogs. From the catalog tab select “My Organizations Catalogs” and click on the green + button.

Select a name for the catalog and give the description. You can also select subscribe to external catalogs if there are other public catalogs defined in your infrastructure. Hit Next.

In storage type select the appropriate storage profile. I am very sure no body wants to keep vApp templates on the fast SSD disks. Select appropriate tier of storage (preferably SATA)

Next select the organizations with whom you want to share this template. Click on “Add Organizations“

If you want to publish this catalog with all organizations select “All Organizations” or if you want to share this catalog with only few organizations then select “Specific Organizations” and from the list of organizations select the one and click on Add button. You will not be able to make any changes in the Access level as this catalog will be read only for other organizations.

Hit Next to continue.

Now you have to select “Enable Publishing” and supply a password. This password will be entered by other organizations when they will try to access this public catalog.

Note: Supplying password is optional.

On Ready to complete page review your settings and hit finish.

You can see now a new catalog has been created. Now the next task is to populate this catalog with vApp templates. Click on the public catalog to browse for the options.

Under “vApp Templates” click on the import from ovf.

Browse for the ovf file from your local disk or you can import from URL directly. Populate the name and description field and click on upload button. In my lab I am testing my catalog by populating Nexus 1000v ovf.

You can monitor the transfer of the ovf file from local disk to catalog.

Once the transfer is completed then vApp will be imported in the catalog.

Once the import is successful the screen will look like as shown below.

In next post of this series we will look how an organization deploy a new vApp from the shared Public catalog. Also we will create a private catalog for that organization.

Stay tuned!!!