This page defines the technical and security standard that every VCF Extension in this catalogue is built to. The requirements below are met by all Management Packs in the portfolio. A specific pack adds only the credentials, roles and ports of the system it connects to, which are documented on that pack's Deployment page.
All VCF Extensions are delivered as containerised adapters and are compatible with the VCF Operations platform from version 8.10 and later.
| Requirement | Value |
|---|
| VCF Operations | 8.10.0 or later (vcops_minimum_version declared in every Management Pack) |
| Deployment model | Containerised adapter, one container image per Management Pack |
| Collector | Any Cloud Proxy belonging to the collector group, no dedicated appliance required |
| Adapter resources | 1024 MB memory limit, 5-minute default collection interval (configurable per instance) |
| Upgrade path | PAK upgrade preserves existing adapter instances and collected history |
| Requirement | Value |
|---|
| Communication | HTTPS from the Cloud Proxy to the management interface of the monitored system |
| Transport security | TLS 1.2 minimum; TLS 1.3 negotiated automatically where the target supports it |
| Certificate validation | The target certificate is validated against the system trust store |
| CA certificates | Support for certificates issued by a public or enterprise CA, and for self-signed certificates on explicitly accepted targets |
| Registry access | HTTPS/443 from the Cloud Proxy to registry.topthor.com for the adapter image |
| Outbound only | No inbound connection to the Cloud Proxy or to VCF Operations is required |
No Management Pack writes to the monitored system. Every account used by an adapter is read-only; the adapter only reads inventory, configuration and performance data.
Management Packs that monitor network and facility devices communicate over SNMP v3 only.
| Requirement | Value |
|---|
| Protocol | SNMP v3, USM security model, authPriv security level |
| Authentication | SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 (MD5 accepted for legacy endpoints) |
| Privacy | DES (legacy endpoints), AES-128, AES-192, AES-256 |
| Recommended configuration | SHA-256 authentication with AES-128 privacy |
| Context name | Configurable per adapter instance |
| Requirement | Value |
|---|
| Storage | All credentials are stored in the VCF Operations credential store |
| Separation | Credentials are never embedded in the Management Pack, the manifest or the container image |
| Scope | One credential set per adapter instance, read-only on the target system |
| Rotation | Credentials can be changed without reinstalling the Management Pack |
Every VCF Extension delivers the collected data into VCF Operations as native objects, together with their metrics, properties and relationships.
| Capability | Delivered by every Management Pack |
|---|
| Objects and object kinds | yes - modelled per system, vendor-neutral where several producers share one pack |
| Identifiers | yes - stable identifiers preserve object continuity across collection cycles |
| Properties | yes - inventory and configuration attributes per object |
| Metrics | yes - performance and health counters with declared units |
| Object relationships | yes - parent/child topology rebuilt automatically on every collection cycle |
| External relationships | yes where applicable - links to vSphere virtual machines, hosts, IPAM addresses and other Management Packs |
| Data quality | unmeasured values are never reported as zero, so no alert fires on absent data |
| Content | Delivered by every Management Pack |
|---|
| Dashboards | yes - placed in a dedicated folder named after the product and installed with the adapter content |
| Alerts | yes - alert definitions with severity, thresholds and recommended actions |
| Symptom definitions | yes - the conditions that drive the alerts |
| Reports | yes - on-demand and scheduled reporting of the collected objects |
| Recommendations | yes - capacity and configuration recommendations derived from the collected data |
| Custom groups | yes - groups that roll the collected objects up for dashboards, policies and reports |
Content is vendor-neutral: where one Management Pack supports several producers, the same dashboards, alerts, reports and groups serve every producer, because they build on the shared object model rather than on vendor-specific keys.
| Area | Commitment |
|---|
| Policies | Collected metrics and properties are available to VCF Operations policies without additional configuration |
| Business services | Objects and relationships can be used to build business applications and tiers |
| Cross-pack topology | Management Packs tag their objects with the IPAM relation property, so relationships between packs are created automatically |
| Multi-vendor model | One adapter kind and one object model per product family; the producer is distinguished only by a property, never by a separate object kind |
| Area | Commitment |
|---|
| Supported platform | VCF Operations 8.10.0 and later, verified against the current 9.x release |
| Release cadence | Versioned releases aligned with VCF Operations releases; each release carries a PAK file and a signed container image |
| Documentation | Product documentation published for every Management Pack, covering objects, metrics, deployment fields and alerts |
| Upgrade safety | An object-model change that affects the adapter instance identity is called out in the release notes of the affected version |
