Frequently Asked Questions
Organizations, vDCs, pools, regions
I can't get into the Cloud Director panel, although I have money on my account
Perhaps you are trying to access the Moscow Cloud Director account through the St. Petersburg Cloud Director web panel (or vice versa). In that case, check the web panel address:
- for Moscow resources:
vcd-msk.selectel.ru. - for resources in St. Petersburg:
vcd.selectel.ru.
The Cloud Director account is locked for 10 minutes after 5 unsuccessful password attempts. You can change the password on the Users tab of the control panel.
I can't see my vDCs in the Cloud Director dashboard, what should I do?
We have two Cloud Director panels in our infrastructure — for resources in Moscow (vcd-msk.selectel.ru) and in St. Petersburg (vcd.selectel.ru). Consequently, Moscow resources are managed through the Moscow Cloud Director, while resources in St. Petersburg are managed through the St. Petersburg Cloud Director.
To open the region-appropriate Cloud Director, click the Virtual Data Center card header in the Control Panel.
You can link two regions in the same web panel using the Multisite function, details in documentation.
How to transfer VMs from one pool to another?
You can only change the VM pool for the entire vApp:
- Move the VM to a separate vApp.
- Disable this vApp in the Cloud Director interface and then select Move to from the context menu.
- In the Virtual Datacenter column, select a datacenter with a different pool type.
- Press OK.
For Windows VMs it is necessary to leave a request through the ticket system.
For VMs with disk up to 40GB, the transfer time is no more than 10 minutes.
I need to transfer vDC to another account, is this possible?
Yes. It is possible, but with conditions and limitations:
- there should be no vDC on the new account;
- you can only transfer all the vDCs from the old account to the new account at once;
- migration is performed at the Organization level, i.e. the Organization and all vDCs in it are migrated at once;
- there is no VM downtime;
- all users of the Organization are saved and migrated with it.
To transfer, you must submit a request through the ticket system.
What are the limits on resources and number of vDCs?
Number of virtual data centers per account — 5.
To see the limits of the virtual data center, see the Create virtual data center instructions.
How do I remove vDC?
Only empty vDCs can be deleted. Beforehand, via Cloud Director, delete all vApps, VMs, vApp templates, and directories.
In the Control Panel, go to Cloud powered by VMware. Expand the menu (⋮) in the virtual data center card and click Delete Data Center.
Networks
How many networks can be created in one vDC?
Up to 50 networks in a single vDC. The limit can be increased at the client's request.
Local area network to other services?
vDC networks can be connected to a LAN of dedicated servers, colocation servers, racks, and leased network equipment.
You can use any addressing within the local network.
QnQ is not supported. If you are using QnQ on a physical LAN, you must make a new local VLAN and connect it in VMware. Submit a request through the ticket system. In the application, specify which vDC the network will be started in, the addressing on the physical network, and the desired addressing on the VMware network.
Is there network equipment redundancy?
Yes. All network equipment from access switches to routers is fully booked. The failure of any network device will not affect the availability of VMs from public and local networks.
Is it possible to assign a public IP directly to a VM without NAT?
Yes. We will allocate the Direct Connected subnet /29 or /28. You can order subnet sizes up to /24 on request via the ticket system. You can use any available address within a dedicated subnet. The cost per block of addresses is listed on the service page.
The address is assigned automatically on machine startup if the conditions are met:
- vmware-tools (Windows)/open-vm-tools (*nix) utility is installed inside the VM;
- the machine's network interface is connected to the required network.
No access from VM to its external IP via NAT, what to do?
We need to do NAT reflection, aka NAT hairpinning, aka NAT loopback, example:
NAT or Firewall not working, what's wrong?
If the firewall is disabled, NAT rules will not function.
Make sure the firewall is enabled and has rules on it that allow the desired traffic. Otherwise, enable firewall and add the necessary rules manually.
What kind of firewall (ITU) is being used?
We suggest using the built in NSX.
Disks
Virtual Disk Speed
You can see the disk speeds in the VMware-based Public Cloud Product Description instructions.
Is it possible to connect virtual disks from different pools to the same VM?
No. When you create a virtual machine, you can use different disk types, but only within the pool in which it is created. For example, vSSD and Fast vSSD at the same time, or vHDD and Fast vHDD. You can create VMs in different pools and see them together in your organization in Cloud Director, and connect them on the same network.
VM Snapshots. How to use and manage it?
You can create, delete, and restore snapshots through the Cloud Director panel.
One snapshot per VM. When creating a VM snapshot, snapshots of all disks connected to the VM are created. There are no restrictions on disk snapshots.
You can't create a disk from a snapshot. You can revert the virtual machine to the version saved in the snapshot.
It is not recommended to store the snapshot for more than 72 hours. Storing snapshots longer than this time may cause performance degradation of VM disks. For long-term backups, use a backup service.
In what formats can templates be imported?
Cloud Director supports templates in the following formats: ova and ovf. A template in ovf format should be loaded together with its associated files: vmx, mf, vmdk.
Cannot select storage policy when creating VMs from a template in Cloud Director
When you create a virtual machine, in the Templates table, the last column shows only the template storage.
You can configure the storage policy after the VM has been created:
- Click Details on the card of the created VM.
- In the Storage Policy column, select the storage policy and click Save. You can select the storage policy that matches the virtual data center pool (vHDD and Fast vHDD for Silver, vSSD and Fast vSSD for Gold).
Backup
How is backup implemented?
Backup is implemented based on Veeam Backup & Replication™ (VBR). Veeam® Backup Enterprise Manager console is used to manage backups.
Learn more about the backup service.
How do I manage my backups?
Veeam Backup & Replication ™ (VBR) is connected separately for organizations in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
To access the Veeam® Backup Enterprise Manager console, use the corresponding link:
vbr.selectel.ru/vCloud/<org-name>/for St. Petersburgvbr-msk.selectel.ru/vCloud/<org-name>/for Moscow
Specify <org-name> is the name of the organization.
To log in, enter the account information for the appropriate region.
Other
How do I see the VM's load?
Go to the Cloud Director web panel. In the virtual machine card, click Details. In the interface that opens, find the last tab Monitoring Charts. This displays the VM load graphs — totals across all disks in the VM.
The storage depth of the metrics is 90 days. The step is 1 minute. The Cloud Director user interface displays data for the last week, day, hour, and half hour. Older metrics are available through the API: current values, historical values.
Available metrics:
- cpu.usage.average
- cpu.usage.maximum
- cpu.usagemhz.average.
- disk.provisioned.latest
- disk.used.latest
- mem.usage.average
- virtualDisk.numberReadAveraged.average
- virtualDisk.numberWriteAveraged.average
- virtualDisk.read.average
- virtualDisk.write.average
Metrics are obtained at the hypervisor level and do not require additional utilities to be installed on the VM.
The Cloud Director interface includes the metrics disk.read.average and disk.write.average. These metrics are used for classical storage systems. The virtualDisk.read.average and virtualDisk.write.average metrics are used for virtual machine disks hosted on vSAN storage.
Does VMware cloud support nested virtualization?
Yes, it supports it, but operational level performance is not guaranteed. Details in VMware documentation.
Maximum CPU, RAM, virtual machine disk size
For a VM whose operability we guarantee, the maximum values are as follows:
- vCPU — 72 (Platinum cluster);
- vRAM — 256 GB;
- virtual disk — 10 TB.
Is Microsoft software available in a Cloud powered by VMware?
Yes. You can install from your Windows server edition VM image:
- Windows Server 2019 Standard;
- Windows Server 2016 Standard;
- Windows Server 2012R2 Standard.
You can use the server edition with the Desktop Experience package installed.
Windows is licensed per core of the running virtual machine.
Do Selectel employees have access to the vDC and customer data?
It is technically possible for a limited number of company employees to access the customer's infrastructure and data. The need for this access is due to the fulfillment of the obligation to maintain the operability of the infrastructure that is transferred to the customer.
According to the regulations, customer data may not be copied, modified or deleted without the explicit authorization of the customer.
How is the isolation between client clouds handled? If one client loads the host, will the neighbors start to suffer?
VMware vSphere® has a mechanism called DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) that will automatically and invisibly move neighbors to less busy hosts.
How do I migrate my VMs to Selectel's infrastructure?
You can use the VMware Cloud Director Availability™ client to migrate virtual machines. To configure the client, see How to install on-prem VMware Cloud Director Availability.
Alternatively, you can export/import your VMs via the OVA template:
- To export machines, move them to a separate vApp. Expand the menu in the vApp card and click Download. The template file will be downloaded in OVA format.
- Next, import the downloaded template into Selectel Infrastructure-based Cloud Director. Use the How to import a VM instructions.
Is there support for Terraform?
Yes, recommended: https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/vcd/index.html
What APIs are provided?
We offer customers the ability to use the Cloud Director API to manage virtual machines, networks, disks, and other objects. Documentation is available on the VMware website:
We are using Cloud Director 10.3.3, which supports API versions 34.0-36v3.
We will provide a separate Selectel API for creating virtual data centers (vDCs). The API and its documentation are now in development.
How do I make it so that VMs are always on different hosts in the cluster?
In Cloud Director, you can create Affinity rules that allow you to specify VM placement rules for the VMware DRS mechanism.
The rules are of two kinds:
- Affinity — Specify the DRS engine to host VMs on a single virtualization host;
- Anti Affinity — allows VMs to be placed on different hosts of the cluster, which increases service availability in case of failure of one or more hosts.
These rules vary by type:
- hard (required) rules that will prevent the rule from being ignored if the required number of available hosts is not available. For example, the rule specifies 10 machines, but only 8 hosts are available in the cluster — in this case, the machines will not start;
- soft (preferred) rules that allow the requirements of a rule to be ignored if there are no resources that satisfy the rule.
To configure Anti Affinity rules:
- Go to the vDC management section.
- Under Compute, select Affinity Rules.
- Press New in the desired section (Affinity Rules or Anti Affinity Rules).
- Specify the name of the rule.
- Specify the rule type using the Required checkbox — set will create a hard rule, unset will create a soft rule.
- Press the Save button.
It is recommended not to create rules that include a large number of VMs — it is more appropriate to divide VMs into groups based on the services they are responsible for and create separate rules for each group of VMs.
After downloading a virtual machine from Cloud Cloud, it fails to upload it to any VMware platform
After downloading the virtual machine, the following symptoms occur:
- It cannot be loaded in Cloud, vSphere, or Workstation;
- when trying to unpack the VM with 7zip archiver we get an error:
There is data after the end of the useful data block; - in the unpacked folder, the virtual machine disk file appears with zero size;
- virtual machine cannot be converted using OVFTool, errors appear.
This problem occurs for virtual machines larger than 8Gb. This is due to the use of the pax ustar extension when creating an OVA file on the Cloud Director platform.
Solutions to this problem: the OVA file must be unpacked with an archiver other than 7zip, such as WinRAR for Windows or tar for Linux/Unix. Once all files have been extracted, they can be downloaded to any supported platform.
Cannot mount custom ISO image from the library
The error is often seen when an organization has multiple VDCs created in different pools.
The problem occurs because the ISO image is hosted in a library with a different pool storage policy than the VM hosting pool to which the image is mounted.
Solution Options:
- Create a new directory with a predefined policy that matches the intended pool of hosted VMs and copy the ISO image to it.
- Change the storage policy on the current directory and reupload the image to it again.
When you upload your own ISO image to the local library, the error occurs
There is a restriction on loading ISO images into local libraries in MSK-SILVER-1 clusters.
If an error occurs, create a ticket and provide a link to the ISO image. We will create a customized service library and pour your image into it.
Cannot remove a virtual machine from the Cloud Director panel
If one of the problems arises:
- an error appears when trying to delete a VM;
- logs contain an event of the following form: vApp 'vApp Name' () deletion start attempt;
- In the Virtual Applications tab, there is no vApp bound to the VM with the specified name.
If the VM was created as a single VM without a vApp, the vApp is still created as a service, non-mapped object. After the VM is shut down, the service vApp itself remains in the Partially Running status and blocks the VM from being deleted. The problem can occur when shutting down the VM from the guest OS. To properly remove a VM, enable and disable it from the Cloud Director panel or use the option to convert the VM to a vApp.
To convert a VM to a vApp:
- From the VM action drop-down menu, select Convert to vApp.
- Open the Virtual Applications tab.
- Turn off the vApp.
- Uninstall the vApp and the VM.