vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights

My journey with VMware vRealize Automation already started in the early 6.x-Days. Even then, I was absolutely thrilled by the flexibility and added value of this product. In the meantime, the competitors’ market has grown massively, but in my opinion, there is still nothing comparable. I am happy to show here some of the upcoming vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights.

Cloud Assembly – Custom Resources

VMware has introduced the ability to create custom resources in Cloud Assembly. Custom Resources allow you to define anything as a resource that can be used as part of a
blueprint. As a part of creating the custom resource you define the Create, Update, and
Destroy actions for the resource and can also add any additional Day-2 operation actions to be available for the resource once deployed.

vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Custom Ressources
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Custom Ressources

Cloud Assembly – Custom Day 2 Actions

Just like when you create a custom resource, you can create custom actions that can be performed as Day-2 operations for any resource deployed whether that is a custom resource or one of the many private and public cloud resources that are available in the Cloud Assembly blueprint design canvas. Once the resource is deployed you will be
presented all operation actions you allow including OOTB actions as well as custom
actions you have specified. All actions can be controlled by policy to projects, blueprints, or even down to a specific user.

vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Day-2 Actions

Resource Limit Settings in Projects

Resource limits for storage, memory, and CPU can now be set when adding a cloud zone to a project within the Cloud Assembly service. This will allow you to set these limits per deployment target for a specific group of users to prevent overuse of a specific set of infrastructure or public cloud accounts.

vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Ressource Limits

Approval Policies

Approval policies are a level of governance that helps control which Deployment Requests and Actions require approvals before being initiated. If the approver rejects the request, the request is not initiated and fails to execute. For example, you have a catalog item that is important, but it consumes a significant amount of resources. You want one of your IT administrators to review any deployment requests to ensure that the request is needed. Another example applies to day 2 actions. Making changes to a deployment that is used by many might be devastating. You want the project administrator who manages the deployment for that team to review all changes to the deployed catalog item.

vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Approval Policies
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Approval Policies

Day-2 Actions for Network Objects

The deep VMware NSX integration of vRealize Automation gets even more enhanced with new capabilities.

  • Administrators can change and rollback network bindings
  • Simplified load balancer consumption for end-users
  • On-demand Security Groups can be applied per NIC
  • Existing Security Groups Based on Constraints
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Day-2 Actions for Network Objects
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Day-2 Actions for Network Objects
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Day-2 Actions for Network Objects
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - Day-2 Actions for Network Objects

Cloud Assembly – IPAM SDK

A great new toolkit for developing a package that enables integration of a third-party IPAM provider with vRealize Automation. The download package provides a sample implementation of third-party IPAM providers. Technical guidance explains how to build an IPAM integration that conforms to vRA’s expectations for a third-party IPAM provider.

vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - IPAM SDK

Service Broker – OVA as a Content Source

One of the vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights is powered by the Bitnami acquisition VMware made last year. Bitnami brings an entire library of prepackaged application stacks to the VMware Marketplace.

  • It makes it easy to get your favorite open source software up and running on any
    platform, including your laptop, Kubernetes and all the major clouds.
  • One of the formats that is provided for these popular application stacks is the Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) format.
  • Provide OVAs directly to users in a self-service catalog using Service Broker.
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - OVA as Content Source
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights - OVA as Content Source

Ansible Tower Integration

The support for Red Hat Ansible Tower allows you to run Ansible Tower Job Templates from our blueprint canvas. Incorporating existing Ansible Tower instances into vRealize Automation gives you another option for configuration management along with Puppet and Ansible Open Source.

  • The Ansible Tower and/or Engine can be on-prem or in the cloud. The nodes that
    will be managed or deployed could also be on-prem or in the cloud.
  • The integration provides maximum flexibility when integrating with these solutions.
vRealize Automation 8.1 Highlights -  Ansible Tower Integration

vSphere with Kubernetes (Project Pacific)

vSphere with Kubernetes will revolutionize how Kubernetes will be delivered to developers by making it a first-class citizen within vSphere. In vRealize Automation an administrator can create a supervisor namespace on a supervisor cluster and assign
the namespace to a project. Users in that project can get the kubectl and deploy application containers and VMs.This namespace will be available on the K8s resource page in infrastructure.

vRealize Automation 8.1 -  vSphere with Kubernetes (Project Pacific)
vRealize Automation 8.1- vSphere with Kubernetes (Project Pacific)

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