Several times in this paper we have discussed the benefits of a vCloud Director-based service over that of a shared vCenter Server model. However, what are the options available to help service providers transition consumers from one model to the other? Prior to vCloud Director 8.20, this could leave service provider operational teams with a number of challenges. The Adopt a vCenter feature, new in vCloud Director 8.20, simplifies these actions significantly by discovering and assuming the management of existing vCenter Server resource pools without interruption or downtime. This feature helps import existing resources into vCloud Director, and as a result, reduces the time and expense involved in managing and scripting custom multitenancy in vCenter Server. Other benefits include the following:

In addition to shared platforms, many “Dedicated Private Cloud” providers have realized that certain very small, dedicated micro vCenter Server environments require too much overhead to manage, and have very low margins, in that there is typically a great amount of time and expense involved in managing a dedicated environment, even if it is very small and does not generate much revenue. Therefore, as cloud services continue to become mainstream to consumers, many customers are increasingly comfortable with shared environments. For these use cases, the ability to adopt existing dedicated vCenter Server instances, discovered into vCloud Director, better aligns cost, revenue, and management overhead for these very small vCenter Server environments.