Posts

XaaS isn’t a made up term, well maybe it is, but it supposed to stand for “Anything as a Service.” vRealize Automation will allow you to publish vRO workflows in the service catalog. This means that you can publish just about any thing you can think of, and not just server blueprints. If you have a workflow that can order your coffee and have it delivered to you, then you can publish it in your vRA service catalog. Side note, if you have that workflow, please share it with the rest of us. ...

In a previous post we went over installing an Enterprise Install of vRealize Automation behind a load balancer. This install required us to setup a Load Balancer with three VIPs but also required that we only had one active member in each VIP. A load balancer with a single member doesn’t really balance much load does it? After the installation is done, some modifications need to be made on the Load Balancer. The instructions on this can be found in the official vRealize Automation Load Balancing Configuration Guide if you want to learn more. There are several examples on how to setup load balancing on an F5 load balancer and NSX for example. This post will focus on a KEMP load balancer which is free for vExperts and it will all be shown through with GUI examples. ...

OK, You’ve done a vRealize Automation 7 simple install and have the basics down. Now it’s time to put your grown up pants on, and get an enterprise install done. This is a pretty long process, so be ready, but trust me, this is much better in version 7 than in the past. Load Balancer To start with, you will want to configure your load balancer. An enterprise install means that you’ll want at least two of each type of service so that you can protect yourself from a failure. There are three Virtual IPs (VIPs) that should be created prior to starting your install. The table below lists an example list of VIPs with their associated members and ports. ...

We’ve deployed a virtual machine from a vRA blueprint, but we still have to manage that machine. One of the cool things we can do with vRealize Automation 7 is to add a custom action. This takes the virtual machine object and runs a vRealize Orchestration blueprint against that input. We call these actions “Day 2 Operations” since they happen post provisioning. To create a new custom resource action go to the Design Tab –> Design –> Resource Actions. Click the “New” button to add a new action. ...

Custom Properties are used to control aspects of machines that users are able to provision. For example, memory and CPU are required information that are necessary for users to deploy a VM from a blueprint. Custom properties can be assigned to a blueprint or reservation to control how memory and CPU should be configured. Custom properties are really powerful attributes that can vastly change how a machine behaves. I like to think of custom properties as the “Windows Registry” of vRealize Automation. Changing one property can have a huge effect on deployments. ...

In vRealize Automation 7 a new concept was introduced called a “Subscription.” A subscription is a way to allow you to execute a vRealize Orchestrator workflow based on some sort of event that has taken place in vRA. Simple idea huh? Well some of you might be thinking to yourself, “Yeah, this is called a stub, Duh!” The truth is that stubs are still available in vRealize Automation 7 but are clearly being phased out and we should stop using them soon because they are likely to not be around in future versions. The idea of an event subscription is a lot like a stub when in the context of machine provisioning, but there are a lot more events that can be triggered than the stubs that have been around in previous versions. Let’s take a look. ...

I’m often reminded of a scene from the movie “Boiler Room” when I see public spats between employees of competing technologies. Ben Affleck plays a young, wealthy and charismatic salesman who is trying to encourage the firm’s new employees to have a certain swagger about them. He says, “Act as if” and then gives some descriptions of things you can act like, for instance the President of the Firm. His point was that you should have a certain confidence about you that doesn’t need to be explained to people. It exists, it’s there, people know it, and you haven’t said anything to them about it. ...

You’ve created your blueprints and entitled users to use them. How do we get them to show up in our service catalog? How do we make them look pretty and organized? For that, we need to look at managing catalog items. Log in as a tenant administrator and go to the Administration Tab –> Catalog Management –> Catalog Items. From here, we’ll need to look for the blueprint that we’ve previously published. Click on the blueprint. ...

An entitlement is how we assign users a set of catalog items. Each of these entitlements can be managed by the business group manager or a tenant administrator can manage entitlements for all business groups in their tenant. To create a new entitlement go to Administration tab –> Catalog Management –> Entitlements. Click the “New” button to add a new entitlement. Under the General tab, enter a name for the entitlement and a description. Change the status to “Active” and select a Business Group. Note: If only a single business group has been created, this will not be selectable since it will default to the only available group. Then select the users who will be part of this entitlement. ...

Blueprints are arguably the thing you’ll spend most of your operational time dealing with in vRealize Automation. We’ve finally gotten most of the setup done so that we can publish our vSphere templates in vRA. To create a blueprint in vRealize Automation 7 go to the “Design” tab. Note: If you’re missing this tab, be sure you added yourself to the custom group with permissions like we did in a previous post, and that you’ve logged back into the portal after doing so. ...