What is a VDC
A Virtual Datacenter (VDC) is the environment that holds all of your infrastructure on the platform. Every virtual machine, network, disk, bucket, and VPN you create lives inside a VDC. Think of it as your own datacenter delivered as software: a single, isolated space where you provision and run everything your workloads need.
What a VDC contains
A VDC groups every resource you work with:
- Virtual machines (VMs): the compute instances that run your applications.
- Virtual networks (VNets): private networks and subnets that connect your VMs.
- Disks: boot and volume block storage attached to your VMs.
- Object storage (S3): buckets for files and backups, accessed over the S3 API.
- Public IPs: routable addresses you assign to VMs or use as network gateways.
- VPNs: OpenVPN, IPsec, and Direct Connect links to your on-premises networks.
Resources and quotas
Each VDC is allocated a fixed pool of resources, and your workloads draw from these pools:
- Compute: vCPU and memory (plus Windows licenses, when you run Windows VMs).
- Storage: separate pools per tier, Performance, Standard, and Archive.
- Backup: capacity reserved for VM restore points.
- Object storage (S3): capacity for your buckets.
- Public IPs: the number of routable addresses available.
When a pool runs out, you cannot allocate more of that resource until you free some up or your quota is increased.
How a VDC fits in
A VDC belongs to a tenant and to the contract it holds with its provider. Everything you build stays within the boundary of the VDC, and resources in one VDC are isolated from those in another.
VDC vs VM
These two are often confused:
- A VDC is the environment, the datacenter that holds your resources and quotas.
- A VM is one resource inside it, a single server running an operating system.
You don't run workloads on a VDC directly. You create VMs and other resources inside it.