Have you seen the previous blog posts, where we show the vRealize Automation 8.1 and VMware Strategy (HERE) ??

This Blog is a continuation of our vRealize Automation 8.1 – General Enhancements series. Part 1 available here!

OVA as a Content Source

Excellent new feature in vRealize Automation that highlights the Bitnami acquisition VMware made last year.
>> Bitnami brings an entire library of prepackaged application stacks to the VMware Marketplace.
>> 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 selfservice catalog using Service Broker

vRA + vROps Integration

In-context views of operations & hybrid cloud cost:

>> New Health Status of deployments with workload metrics

>> New health badge for deployments

Ansible Tower Integration

>> Support for Ansible Tower allows customers to run Ansible Tower Job Templates from our blueprint canvas.

>> Incorporating existing Ansible Tower instances into vRealize Automation gives customers 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.

Active Directory Integration

>> Pre-stage machines in Active Directory during deployment.

>> Supports multiple policies per Project and can be tagged to specific which policy to apply based blueprint configuration.

>> Machine assigned to correct Organization unit based on the Project the deployment user is assigned in Cloud Assembly.

>> When deployment is deleted the machine account is Active Directory is also deleted.

>> vRA Cloud Requires deployment of new On-Prem Extensibility Action appliance

Service Broker Policy

>> Policy Criteria in Service Broker allows you to specify very precise qualifiers when you want the specific policy to run.

>> For example if you only wanted user to be able to run a specific Day 2 operation such as deleting a deployment for a specific blueprint you can use the following policy criteria:

>> Blueprint equal <blueprint name>

>> Or if you only want the policy to run for everyone except the admin group you could specify the following policy criteria:

>> createdBy not equal : admingroup@company.com

What is Next: vRealize Automation 8.1 – DevOps Capabilities

• vRA