Paradigm – MyCloud FAQ

Due to the upgrade from version 10.2 to 10.4.1, we are also making references to 10.3 release below.

Here are the links for the full release note of each version: 10.3 – 10.3.1 and 10.4 –10.4.1
We recommend paying special attention to the « End of Life » and « End of Support » depreciation warnings at the bottom of this document so you can asses whether those depreciation might affect you in the future.

What’s New in This Release

SSO login now requires user interaction before redirecting to the identity provider (IdP). When you navigate to an SSO enabled organization, you see a screen with the organization name and options to either log in with local credentials or to log in with SSO. Selecting the option to log in with SSO redirects you to the identity provider, similar to the behavior in earlier versions. With this feature, you can identify which organization you are signing in to before being redirected away from VMware Cloud Director.

Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts

• Catalog Enhancements
  1. If a catalog is subscribed to a published catalog, the synchronization of templates from the published to the subscribed catalog goes through a number of distinct steps. VMware Cloud Director now provides a detailed view of the currently running catalog synchronization task step and the progress percentage of that step. The currently running task step appears in the Recent Tasks panel and a more detailed view appears if a user clicks the Status of the item being synced. Distinct steps examples are: initializing library item sync, waiting for publisher to download files, transferring files from publisher to subscriber, importing OVF.
  2. When the catalog item synchronization task is at the Transferring files from publisher to subscriber step, clicking the task details shows the Active File Transfers tab where you can see the file transfer progress of individual disk files.
  3. If a catalog synchronization fails in file transfer phase due to VMware Cloud Director service restart or crash, when the cell restarts, the sync resumes from the previous transfer session, and VMware Cloud Director reuses the previously transferred content.
  4. If you deactivate the Automatically download the content from an external catalog setting of a subscribed catalog, at catalog creation, VMware Cloud Director does not sync the items within the catalog. VMware Cloud Director synchronizes only the item metadata. VMware Cloud Director synchronizes the VMDKs when you request a sync on each item. Moreover, if a publisher does not have the content downloaded, the catalog subscription with this option does not trigger download of VMDKs at the publisher side.
• Other Enhancements
  1. Support for vSphere 8.0 VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 brings support for vSphere 8.0.
  2. VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 Does Not Support vCenter Server 6.7 and ESXi 6.7
  3. Service Accounts You can use VMware Cloud Director to create and manage service accounts for applications interacting with VMware Cloud Director. To provide continuous access to VMware Cloud Director, service accounts use OAuth refresh tokens instead of passwords. When using service accounts, applications cannot perform certain tasks and have only View rights for some resources, such as users, groups, roles, and rights. See Managing Service Accounts.
     
• Support for UEFI Boot and Secure Boot
  You can use VMware Cloud Director to create a VM with either BIOS or EFI boot firmware. If you select EFI, you can activate Secure boot. Secure boot in combination with UEFI provides strong assurance that the PC manufacturer verified and trusts the firmware code.

End of Life and End of Support Warnings

• VMware Cloud Director Starts the Deprecation Process for Local Users for Production Use Authentication for local users in VMware Cloud Director does not make use of modern authentication technologies, security best practices, and compliance requirements, such as password policies, 2FA, or MFA support. By using the VMware Cloud Director integration with external identity providers, you can take advantage of all existing and future advancements in the authentication technologies. VMware Cloud Director continues to fully support the use of local users while they are under deprecation. In version 10.4.1, you can use the provided API-based tools to remap any local users to users backed by an external identity provider of your choice. In future releases, VMware Cloud Director will provide UI-based tools for bulk remapping and other necessary emergency access mechanisms. VMware Cloud Director supports LDAP, SAML, and OIDC external identity provider protocols. See the Remap a User Between Identity Providers topic in the Service Provider Admin Guide or the Remap a User Between Identity Providers topic in the Tenant Guide. After you remap a user, the user can log in using the new login flow, continuing to see all their previously owned assets. You can also consider replacing local users created for automation purposes with service accounts. VMware Cloud Director will continue to support local users for evaluation use. Production use of local users will continue to be fully supported until June 1, 2024 or later, if necessary.
  
• APIs Under Accelerated Deprecation VMware Cloud Director API 37.1 (VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1) contains APIs that are under accelerated deprecation and will be removed in future releases. See VMware Cloud Director API Programming Guide API 37.0.