In a vCloud, ISO files are uploaded to a catalog, as shown in Figure 3. The catalog belongs to an organization that is backed by one or more organization virtual datacenters. These are then backed by provider virtual datacenters. A provider virtual datacenter comprises a collection of compute resources, including datastores. These media files might be private, public, or shared with named users.

Uploaded media files are located on the compute resource associated with the organization virtual datacenter. You can attach them to existing virtual machines or use them to install new virtual machines with a process almost identical to the vSphere procedure in Section 4.1.

A good catalog includes all commonly used operating systems, such as the various editions of Windows and common Linux distributions such as Red Hat, CentOS, or SUSE. Software media can consist of custom operating system builds, kickstart CDs, or software packages. There are no limits when including default operating system installation media.