At AI World 2025, we’re excited to announce that the Management Appliance for Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) is now available in Limited Availability. This new capability delivers tighter integration between Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and VMware vSphere, making it easier for administrators to manage their Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) without constantly switching consoles.

Why We Built the Management Appliance

Managing common maintenance tasks in OCVS, such as adding ESXi hosts or configuring new datastores, traditionally requires administrators to switch between the OCI Console and the vSphere Web Client. While this is entirely possible, it can be time-consuming and prone to errors.

The Management Appliance streamlines these operations by introducing a lightweight, customer-controlled deployment that integrates directly with vSphere. It automates provisioning, reduces manual steps, and provides a seamless way to extend OCI capabilities into familiar VMware tools.

What You Can Do with the Management Appliance

With the appliance and its vSphere plugin, administrators can:

  • Add ESXi hosts directly from the vSphere web console.
  • Add VMFS datastores backed by OCI Block Volumes, with options for size, encryption, and performance tuning.
  • Configure ESXi host metrics for export to OCI Monitoring Service, enabling centralized observability and cloud-native integration.
  • Track and monitor jobs within vSphere, reducing the need to cross-check operations manually across multiple consoles.

And this is just the start—additional capabilities are already planned for future releases, ensuring the Management Appliance continues to evolve with tighter OCI–OCVS integration while keeping customer control intact.

Behind the scenes, the Management Appliance runs as a dedicated compute instance in OCI and integrates securely with your SDDC. It is intentionally designed to use a low-cost, lightweight compute shape, ensuring there’s minimal overhead compared to the operational benefits it provides.

Your Environment, Your Control

Security and customer control are core to OCVS, and the Management Appliance is built with these principles in mind:

  • You initiate deployment – the appliance is created only when you choose, using your tenancy credentials and secrets stored securely in your OCI Vault.
  • You decide how long it runs – keep it deployed for ongoing operations, or spin it up temporarily to automate complex tasks and remove it when done.
  • You control access – all user credentials are managed by you, with IAM dynamic groups and policies that you define.
  • No Oracle access – OCVS is a customer-managed service. Oracle does not access your environment after SDDC provisioning; the appliance extends functionality without changing this model.

The result is operational simplicity without compromising control or security. Your environment remains entirely yours.

Benefits for VMware Administrators

  • One console for critical tasks – reduce context switching between OCI and vSphere.
  • Automated provisioning – fewer manual steps mean fewer errors.
  • Cloud-native visibility – export ESXi host metrics into OCI Monitoring for centralized observability.
  • Future-ready design – this limited availability release is the first step; additional features and deeper integrations are coming.

While the Management Appliance is an opt-in feature, it is highly recommended for both existing and new OCVS SDDCs. Using this appliance enables a smoother, more integrated management experience, while keeping your environment fully under your control.

We greatly value your feedback—your experiences will help shape a stronger and more meaningful roadmap. Several additional integrations are already planned, so continued use of the appliance will maintain full customer control while providing tighter integration between OCI and OCVS, enabling seamless adoption and preparing you for the future.

Want to Give It a Try?

The Management Appliance for OCVS is now in Limited Availability. To explore this new capability, contact your Oracle account team or reach out directly to the OCVS product management team at oci_ocvs_product_ww_grp@oracle.com.

To learn more and explore OCVS, visit the official documentation: