Cloudhelix platform upgrade: vCloud 9.1

We recently updated our cloud platform management software to vCloud Director 9.1, giving Cloudhelix clients some new and very useful functionality to utilise. As with all software releases, there’s a whole host of little tweaks and bug fixes alongside some meatier additions. There’s a 12-page white paper available if you’d like all of the detail, but in this short post, we’ve covered off the most relevant new features available in vCloud 9.1.

First things first, didn’t VMware release vCloud Director 9.5 in November? Well, yes, however, it’s yet to be fully supported by the likes of Veeam and Zerto, both of which are fundamental to running our cloud operation, so we’re not updating to 9.5 yet. Once it’s fully supported, we will, of course, be updating to the latest version.

HTML5 interface

As of 9.0, vCloud got a facelift. A new and modern HTML5 user interface based on [VMware’s clarity framework](https://vmware.github.io/clarity/) was added in addition to the old, Flash-based one. Within 9.1, there have been further enhancements to the interface, while both interfaces remain available until full feature parity is achieved.

Performance graphs

The most significant improvement to vCloud is perhaps the addition of performance graphs, allowing our customers to quickly and easily login to vCloud to view graphs for CPU, RAM and disk I/O. To view your performance graphs, simply click the Details link against a virtual machine, expand ‘Monitoring Chart’, then choose a metric (such as CPU or RAM) plus a period (such as hourly or daily)

A new login URL

Slightly less exciting than interfaces and reporting, to login to vCloud 9.1, you now head to…

https: //vcloud.cloudhelix.io/tenant/[yourvcloudorgname]

rather than

https: //vcloud.cloudhelix.io/cloud/org/[yourvcloudorgname].

There are still some features and functions that require the old UI, however, once 9.5 is rolled out, we will have full feature parity with the old UI… And soon the original Flash-based UI will be no more!

If our customers have any questions about vCloud, its features and how to get the most out of it, be sure to get in touch with us at support@cloudhelix.io.