Desired state management of software-defined data center

1. A method of managing configurations of a plurality of data centers that are each managed by one or more management servers, wherein the configurations of the data centers are managed remotely from a cloud services platform using a desired state document that is transmitted from the cloud services platform to gateway appliances respectively provisioned in the data centers, said method comprising:

in response to a change made to the configurations of one of the data centers, updating the desired state document that specifies a desired state of each of the data centers, the updated desired state document including the change;

dispatching a task to perform an apply operation on each of the data centers using the updated desired state document, wherein the apply operation performed on each of the data centers updates the configurations thereof according to the desired state specified in the updated desired state document that is retrieved from the cloud services platform; and

in response to a command to perform a compliance check, instructing each of the data centers to compare a running state thereof against the desired state and report whether or not there is a drift of the running state from the desired state.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the desired state document is stored in association with a first tenant and another desired state document that specifies a desired state of each of another plurality of data centers of a second tenant is stored in association with the second tenant.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

in response to a command to get a running state of a first data center, which is one of the plurality of data centers, instructing the one or more management servers running in the first data center to retrieve the running state of the first data center.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the desired state document is updated to specify the configurations of the first data center.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the change is made in and notified by said one of the data centers.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

in response to receiving a report of drift from one of the data centers, instructing said one of the data centers to update the configurations thereof according to the desired state.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data centers are each a software-defined data center and the configurations of the data centers are managed from the cloud services platform.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the one or more management servers include a virtual infrastructure management server and a virtual network management server and the configurations include configurations of software running in the virtual infrastructure management server and the virtual network management server, and configurations of the software-defined data center managed by the virtual infrastructure management server and the virtual network management server.

9. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions to be executed in a computer system to carry out a method of managing configurations of a plurality of data centers that are each managed by one or more management servers, wherein the configurations of the data centers are managed remotely from a cloud services platform using a desired state document that is transmitted from the cloud services platform to gateway appliances respectively provisioned in the data centers, said method comprising:

in response to a change made to the configurations of one of the data centers, updating the desired state document that specifies a desired state of each of the data centers, the updated desired state document including the change;

dispatching a task to perform an apply operation on each of the data centers using the updated desired state document, wherein the apply operation performed on each of the data centers updates the configurations thereof according to the desired state specified in the updated desired state document that is retrieved from the cloud services platform; and

in response to a command to perform a compliance check, instructing each of the data centers to compare a running state thereof against the desired state and report whether or not there is a drift of the running state from the desired state.

10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the desired state document is stored in association with a first tenant and another desired state document that specifies a desired state of each of another plurality of data centers of a second tenant is stored in association with the second tenant.

11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the method further comprises:

in response to a command to get a running state of a first data center, which is one of the plurality of data centers, instructing the one or more management servers running in the first data center to retrieve the running state of the first data center.

12. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 11 , wherein the desired state document is updated to specify the configurations of the first data center.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the change is made in and notified by said one of the data centers.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the method further comprises:

in response to receiving a report of drift from one of the data centers, instructing said one of the data centers to update the configurations thereof according to the desired state.

15. A cloud services portal deployed in a computer system to manage configurations of a plurality of data centers using a desired state document that is transmitted to gateway appliances respectively provisioned in the data centers, wherein the data centers are each managed by one or more management servers, and the cloud services portal is programmed to carry out the steps of:

in response to a change made to the configurations of one of the data centers, updating the desired state document that specifies a desired state of each of the data centers, the updated desired state document including the change;

dispatching a task to perform an apply operation on each of the data centers using the updated desired state document, wherein the apply operation performed on each of the data centers updates the configurations thereof according to the desired state specified in the updated desired state document that is retrieved from the cloud services portal;

in response to a command to perform a compliance check, instructing each of the data centers to compare a running state thereof against the desired state and report whether or not there is a drift of the running state from the desired state; and

in response to receiving a report of drift from one of the data centers, instructing said one of the data centers to update the configurations thereof according to the desired state.

16. The cloud services portal of claim 15 , wherein the desired state document is stored in association with a first tenant and another desired state document that specifies a desired state of each of another plurality of data centers of a second tenant is stored in association with the second tenant.

17. The cloud services portal of claim 15 , wherein the steps further comprise:

in response to a command to get a running state of a first data center, which is one of the plurality of data centers, instructing the one or more management servers running in the first data center to retrieve the running state of the first data center.