The VMware Cloud Provider™ Program is an ecosystem of over 4,000 service providers located in more than 100 countries across the globe, offering VMware based cloud services. These local providers protect data sovereignty while also providing a wide range of differentiated cloud services and market expertise through specialized compliance and regional certifications.

As the IT landscape rapidly changes through the growth of the mega cloud service providers, cost reduction pressures, focus on time to market, and employee empowerment are compelling VMware Cloud Providers to develop innovative strategies to address these challenges.

For many small and mid-market service providers, the cloud approach to service delivery has become a key area requiring new attention. The abstraction of compute, network, and storage infrastructure is the foundation of cloud. However, making these components accessible and available to the needs of the traditional application and container stacks is the new challenge being faced.

In addition, service providers faced with increasingly constrained operational expense budgets are demanding greater operational efficiency from their infrastructure. The trusted multitenancy model through VMware vCenter Server® directly addresses this issue through the pre-integrated single pane of management offered to tenants.

This paper describes two methods of providing this accessibility to consumers and applications: through a dedicated vCenter Server system and VMware vSphere® infrastructure per tenant, or through a vCenter Server system with shared access for tenants.

In the shared model, the level of access provided to the vCenter Server system for tenants varies significantly, depending on the support model. However, to secure and maintain appropriate SLAs in this type of multitenancy VMware vCenter® architecture, six key pillars must be considered. The following figure describes these key pillars.