Streamlining IT Infrastructure with VMware Cloud Foundation

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are under constant pressure to optimize their IT infrastructure for agility, scalability, and efficiency.VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) emerges as a comprehensive solution designed to streamline IT operations.VMware Cloud Foundation is an integrated platform that combines VMware's compute, storage, networking, and management solutions into a single, easy-to-deploy stack. It provides a unified SDDC platform for running traditional or modern applications in private, public, or hybrid cloud environments.

 

 

 

Understanding VMware Cloud Foundation

VMware Cloud Foundation represents a holistic approach to building and managing modern software-defined data centers (SDDCs). At its core, VCF combines several key components:

1.    vSphere: VMware's industry-leading virtualization platform provides the foundation for running multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical server, optimizing resource utilization, and enabling workload mobility.

2.    vSAN: VMware's software-defined storage solution aggregates locally attached disks across multiple hosts to create a distributed shared storage infrastructure, delivering high performance and resilience.

3.    NSX: VMware NSX offers network virtualization and security capabilities, allowing organizations to create and manage virtual networks, enforce micro-segmentation policies, and enhance overall network agility and security.

4.    vRealize Suite: This includes vRealize Automation for automating the delivery and ongoing management of infrastructure, applications, and custom IT services, and vRealize Operations for monitoring and managing the health, capacity, and performance of the SDDC environment.

Benefits of VMware Cloud Foundation

Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation offers numerous benefits to organizations, including:

1.    Simplified Operations: VCF automates the deployment, configuration, and management of the entire SDDC stack, reducing complexity and freeing up IT resources for more strategic initiatives.

2.    Scalability and Flexibility: With VCF, organizations can easily scale their infrastructure up or down to meet changing business demands, ensuring optimal resource utilization and cost efficiency.

3.    Consistent Infrastructure: VCF provides a consistent infrastructure across private and public clouds, enabling seamless workload mobility and hybrid cloud deployments while maintaining operational consistency.

4.    Enhanced Security: Leveraging features like micro-segmentation and built-in security policies, VCF helps organizations improve their overall security posture and compliance, mitigating cybersecurity risks.

5.    Faster Time to Value: By abstracting hardware complexities and automating deployment and management tasks, VCF accelerates time to value for new applications and services, enabling faster innovation and time-to-market.

Use Cases for VMware Cloud Foundation

VMware Cloud Foundation caters to a wide range of use cases, including:

1.    Data Center Modernization: Organizations can modernize their data centers with VCF, leveraging its integrated capabilities to simplify operations, improve agility, and prepare for future growth.

2.    Hybrid Cloud Deployment: VCF facilitates seamless hybrid cloud deployments by providing a consistent infrastructure and operational model across private and public clouds, enabling workload portability and disaster recovery.

3.    DevOps and Automation: With vRealize Automation and other automation tools integrated into VCF, organizations can streamline DevOps processes, accelerate application delivery, and enhance collaboration between development and operations teams.

4.    Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI): VCF can be used to deploy and manage virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments, providing a scalable and efficient solution for delivering virtual desktops to end-users, regardless of their location or device.

Implementation Strategies

Implementing VMware Cloud Foundation involves several key steps, including:

1.    Assessment and Planning: Conduct a comprehensive assessment of existing infrastructure, workloads, and business requirements to determine the optimal deployment model and architecture for VCF.

2.    Deployment and Configuration: Deploy and configure VMware Cloud Foundation according to best practices, leveraging automated deployment tools and predefined configurations to streamline the process.

3.    Integration and Customization: Integrate VCF with existing tools, processes, and workflows, and customize the platform to meet specific business needs, such as compliance requirements or performance optimizations.

4.    Migration and Onboarding: Migrate existing workloads and applications to the VCF environment, leveraging migration tools and methodologies to minimize disruption and downtime.

5.    Training and Support: Provide training and support to IT staff and end-users to ensure they are proficient in using VCF and maximizing its capabilities to drive business value.

VMware Cloud Foundation emerges as a powerful solution for streamlining IT infrastructure and enabling organizations to build and manage modern, software-defined data centres. By integrating compute, storage, networking, and management into a unified platform, VCF simplifies operations, enhances agility, and accelerates time to value for new initiatives. Whether it's data centre modernization, hybrid cloud deployment, or DevOps automation, VCF provides the foundation for organizations to innovate and stay competitive in today's digital landscape.

Simplifying Google Cloud platform (GCP) Management with VMware Aria Automation

 

Many VMware customers are now embracing a multi-cloud strategy to propel their digital business growth. While the cloud offers numerous advantages, managing multiple clouds presents its own set of challenges. These challenges arise from handling diverse data, applications, and policies across various clouds. VMware Aria Automation is a platform designed to address these complexities. It enables customers to deliver a unified self-service multi-cloud environment, simplifying operations and facilitating scalable growth.

As part of VMware's commitment to empowering customers on their multi-cloud journeys, a plugin-based architecture was announced in the April release. This architecture enables seamless integration with native public cloud resources, offering enhanced flexibility and control. VMware is thrilled to announce the addition of support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to further expand the capabilities of our multi-cloud solution. In this blog, we will explore the exciting new features that come with this update.

New Plugin-Based Native GCP Resource Support

Support for GCP VMs

VMware Aria Automation now offers support for provisioning virtual machines (VMs) hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This support is made possible through the plugin-based architecture, expanding the capabilities of the platform. With this new feature, users can take advantage of all properties and features available in GCP, rather than being limited to a predefined set by VMware Aria Automation.

The addition of support for GCP VMs in VMware Aria Automation through the plugin-based architecture brings enhanced flexibility and access to the latest features available on GCP. Users can now leverage the full range of properties and benefits provided by GCP, unlocking greater customization and real-time updates. This integration simplifies the management and provisioning of GCP VMs within the VMware Aria Automation platform, offering a seamless experience for users.

 

Support for VM snapshots in GCP

VMware Aria Automation has introduced enhanced snapshot capabilities for virtual machines (VMs) hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This new feature, built on top of the classic VM objects, expands the snapshot functionality within the platform. With these enhancements, users can effectively manage and utilize snapshots for their GCP deployments, enabling greater control over system states.

Key Snapshot Use Cases:

The plugin-based framework in VMware Aria Automation now supports the following snapshot use cases for GCP:

Creation of a new snapshot from a disk resource while creating a new deployment using a blueprint

Deletion of an existing snapshot

Update an existing snapshot.

Restoring a disk from a snapshot

 

VMware Aria Automation's enhanced snapshot capabilities for GCP VMs empower users to effectively manage system states and configurations. With the ability to create, delete, update, and restore snapshots, users can maintain control over their deployments and easily revert to previous states as needed. These features offer greater flexibility, efficiency, and peace of mind for managing GCP deployments within the VMware Aria Automation platform.

Support for managing network resources in GCP

VMware Aria Automation has expanded its capabilities to support the provisioning and management of network resources on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This feature enables users to seamlessly configure and optimize network connectivity within their GCP deployments, fostering efficient communication between Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks. The plugin-based architecture empowers users with various operations, including adding, removing, updating, and patching network resources, as well as switching to custom mode.

VMware Aria Automation's expanded support for managing network resources in GCP enhances the connectivity and communication capabilities within GCP deployments. With features such as VPC Network Peering, add/remove/update peering, custom mode switching, and network patching, users can optimize their network configurations to meet specific requirements. This enhanced functionality offers an optimized user experience, enabling efficient network management within the VMware Aria Automation platform.

Support for managing disks resources in GCP

VMware Aria Automation now offers comprehensive support for managing disk resources on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). With the plugin-based architecture, users can easily attach, detach, and encrypt disks, leveraging storage profiles for efficient disk management within GCP deployments. This capability simplifies disk resource operations, enhancing the user experience and enabling faster provisioning of VM instances.

Key Disk Resource Management Features:

The plugin-based architecture in VMware Aria Automation provides the following essential capabilities for managing disk resources in GCP:

Disk creation (present)

Disk deletion (absent)

Disk display (describe)

VMware Aria Automation's support for managing disk resources in GCP through the plugin-based architecture streamlines disk operations within GCP deployments. With features such as disk creation, deletion, and display, users can efficiently provision, manage, and assess disk resources according to their specific requirements. This enhanced functionality improves the user experience and accelerates the provisioning of VM instances, facilitating a more streamlined and efficient disk management process within the VMware Aria Automation platform.

Support for storage buckets in GCP plugin

The StorageBucket resource represents a bucket in Cloud Storage. VMware Aria automation supports creating and deleting a Bucket resource in GCP. Also provides the ability to patch and update the storage bucket. StorageBucket Resource can be managed with default access control.  Bucket resources can be patched and updated. It provides an option for users to lock the retention policy of a Bucket resource.

Manage shielded instance resources in GCP

VMware Aria Automation supports the creation of Shielded VMs, by using a dedicated “shield” property. Shielded VMs offer verifiable integrity of the compute Engine VM instances, so the user can be confident his instances haven’t been compromised by boot- or kernel-level malware or rootkits.

Learn more about how VMware Aria Automation plugin-based Architecture supports the latest GCP capabilities: GCP resource support in VMware Aria Automation.

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What is new in VMware vRealize Automation 8.10.0

 

VMware has released VMware vRealize Automation 8.10 as on October 2022. With this release, VMware has provided several enhancements and new Features.

This is released introduce the ability for SaltStack users to view grains data of the salt vms at the time of deployment in Cloud Assembly and also resolved the issue , Spaces in Action Based Extensibility name is causing some issues in UI

New Features

• Cloud Guardrails (vRA Cloud Only) - Guided Setup

A guided setup is now included in Guardrails. This feature takes you through guided steps to onboard the cloud environments into Guardrails and enforce governance.

• Display salt grains data in Cloud Assembly for a more detailed resource view

This release provides the ability for SaltStack users to view grains data of the salt vms at the time of deployment in Cloud Assembly.

• Provide the ability to set custom salt grain data with SaltStack Config resource on Cloud Template

Cloud admins can now set custom salt grains as part of SaltStack Config Resource on a Cloud Template. This enables the cloud admins to manage the provisioned resource using the highstate file.

• Custom form fields with defined valueList are displayed as multi value picker

When adding a row or object fields in the custom forms designer, complex nested fields that have a defined valueList in their schema are now displayed as Value Picker or Multi Value Picker with enhancements to show default labels.

• Integration support between vRA and vRO user interactions

The vRA and vRO integration now supports 'User Interaction' during provisioning to Allow the ability to collect information that may not be known during the request time. This feature has these limitations:

• Nested workflows containing Manual User Interactions don't create work items under 'Inbox' tab. In that case, the interaction can only be answered from vRO directly.
• Script operations on LdapUsers and LdapGroups from executions from vRA won't yield result
• Requires the latest version of vRO (8.9.1) to work properly, due to fixes in vRO itself
• Variables of type SecureString cannot be displayed in the MUI form properly

Supported for Catalog Items, Custom Resources and Resource Actions. Learn more about user input requests.

Resolved Issues

• Default cluster group is not enabled for Cloud Assembly user with custom role

Cloud assembly user with custom role for managing integrations can't select default cluster group on TMC integration.

• Error importing Qualys scan results in Saltstack (SecOps) config UI

Importing latest version of Qualys scan report results in an error in Saltstack config (SecOps) UI.

• vRA deployed boot disk show as Discovered in resource center

Boot disk which is a part of the deployment appears as deployed/onboarded resources ** in resource view.

• Spaces in Action Based Extensibility name is causing some issues in UI

When working with an action name that starts or ends with a white space, you cannot search for these actions in the UI. In the editor the white space is trimmed, resulting in an error  “Action is not in same project as Flow ”, because the action with the trimmed name could not be found.

• First Class Disk resize from vRA fails on vCenter versions >= 7.0.3

From vRA, the resize action on a First Class Disk attached to a VM fails on vC version 7.0.3. The same action completed successfully when performed directly on the vCenter using PowerCLI. The issue is identified with the fail fast mechanism present in vRA that checks if the disk is attached and immediately fails the request.

• Inconsistencies with data may occur when switching from text to password field in custom form

Data inconsistencies might occur when service broker admins switch from text to password field in custom form. 

• vRealize Orchestrator (vCOIN) - Context Actions sometimes are not Initialized on clean setup

When an administrator tries to assign a context action from a workflow page it may throw an error.

Note: If an error occurs again after the upgrade, log into the vRO Web Client with an administrator account to the Configurations page, and delete the configuration elements residing in the following directory - '/vCOIN/_system'. Then login again in the vSphere client with administrator account and navigate to the context actions page and retry again.

• vRealize Orchestrator(vRO) - Scheduled tasks were failing intermittently because the authentication tokens had to be renewed.

The issue is now fixed with this release. vRO Scheduled tasks no longer require authentication tokens to be renewed for non-administrator users when not using the vRA plugin in the Workflow. Scheduled tasks will continue to run successfully.

• REST operations fail to encode special characters

As of 8.8.0 vRO version, invoking REST operations with query parameter values that contained certain special characters ($, ) failed with "Illegal group reference" error. Another manifestation of this bug could be incorrectly sent query parameter values, which didn't match the server's expectations. 

Resolution: Upgrade vRO platform version to 8.10.0 or upgrade just the REST plug-in to the build released with vRO 8.10.0

• Overprovision occurs when attempting to onboard past resource limits

Analysis of Relocation showed that the Provisioning Service API erroneously returned a capacity that was available when in fact it shouldn't have been. This was reflected by the cloud zone where resources were not consumed by onboarded workloads when they should have been.

Now, the requests coming to provisioning service are now serialized, so capacity requests and allocation worked as expected.

Changed and Deprecated Functionality

• Deprecate PowerCLI 11.5

Powershell 6 with PowerCLI 11.5 has been deprecated. Use PowerCLI 12.7.0 in its place.

• SaltStack Config

Upcoming in the October 2022 (next) release, the saltConfiguration property will be deprecated and removed. Users are encouraged to use the saltResource property in its place

What is new in VMware vRealize Automation 8.8

 

 VMware  has Announced General Availability of VMware vRealize Automation 8.8 as on April 28, 2022. With this release, VMware has provided several enhancements and new capabilities. 

This creates an opening, particularly for IT infrastructure and operations teams that maintain the needs of developers and DevOps engineers, to streamline IT delivery processes by embracing modern automation practices. Because the existing IT infrastructure processes have been too tightly coupled and too inflexible to maintain modern application development practices, developers have embraced public clouds and open-source tools without a lot of IT oversight. Therefore, modernizing IT processes with automation holds the key to empowering IT to drive innovation together with developers in a safe, compliant, agile, and scalable way.Key vRealize Automation 8.8 capabilities and enhancements include:

• Multi-level approvals. Enable customers to define an approval policy and provision workflows in their environments. This feature adds the ability to specify the level of approval when multiple policies meet approval criteria. This allows approvals to send out sequentially, requiring multiple approvals before a requested cloud template is deployed. Use cases include an administrative approval, followed by a finance approval, to ensure that a provisioning request follows all policies and is within budget.

• Custom naming. Allow admins to easily manage and automate multiple naming standards. vRealize Automation has completely evolved the original feature to offer a wide range of additional features included unique profiles based upon scope, unique increments, and patterns per resource type, configure increment settings, expanded properties for the format, and matching patterns to support additional unique counters specific to a property.

• Day 2 operations for vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters. Enhance automation by provisioning Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters to update the Kubernetes version, Tanzu Cluster VM classes and scale worker nodes.

• Change Owner Day-2 Action support for AD Group Users. Facilitate the change of a deployment owner to users belonging to AD groups, such as project administrator or project member. Following this enhancement, users can easily provide AD groups with access to vRealize Automation and move ownership between users.

• vRealize Lifecycle Manager support for vRealize Orchestrator. Enable vRealize Lifecycle Manager support for vRO lifecycle management, including vRO installation, configurations, upgrades/patching, import, day-2 operations, and API automation. This feature allows customers to upgrade their entire vRealize infrastructure through a single pane, including external vRO instances, which leads to a dramatically lower operational cost.

Key vRealize Automation use cases:

• Self-Service Cloud. Evolve your VMware data center to private or multi-cloud infrastructure based on VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Cloud.
• Security Operations. Harness event-driven automation to deliver full-service, closed-loop IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.
• DevOps for Infrastructure. Enable a powerful Infrastructure as Code platform with support for infrastructure pipelining and iterative development.
• Kubernetes Automation. Automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
• Network Automation. Automate VMware NSX to enable faster deployment and complete lifecycle automation of traditional and modern applications.

Learn more about vRealize Automation 8.8 and its new features – please check out these technical blogs:

• Approval Policies in vRealize Automation
• Cloud Assembly Custom naming re-imagined
• What’s New in vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.8
• New vRealize Automation Reddit Community Channel
• New Learn vRealize Automation Sites

 

What is new in VMware vRealize Automation 8.7

 

VMware vRealize Automation 8.7 has released as on March 22, 2022. With this release, VMware has provided several enhancements and new capabilities. The latest release of VMware’s powerful and easy-to-use infrastructure automation platform. With a modern infrastructure automation solution, customers can help reduce overall application development cost, complexity, time to market, and optimize operations across a multi-cloud environment. The result? IT efficiency, security and agility that supports business revenue growth.

Key vRealize Automation 8.7 capabilities and enhancements include:

• SaltStack and CarbonBlack integration. Enable VMware customers to combine intelligent vulnerability insight from Carbon Black Cloud Workload with the powerful IT automation from vRealize Automation SaltStack SecOps. By integrating these technologies, security and IT teams can bridge the gap between security and IT workflows and deliver the last mile of security remediation through a unified, automated solution.

 

• On-demand workload clusters on vSphere with Tanzu. Empower DevOps teams to request vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKGs) clusters in a self-service fashion, either via VMware Cloud Templates, or via the vRealize Automation Service Broker self-service catalog interface. Following this enhancement, users can create TKGs clusters to extend the automated provisioning and management services of TKGs across their vSphere environment.

 

 

• Deployment limit policy enhancements. Allow cloud admins to define deployment limits and restrict CPU (Central Processing Unit) count, memory, and VM (Virtual Machine) count. These policies also enable cloud admins to define deployment resource limits and restrict CPU count and memory of specific resources within a larger deployment.

 

• Resource Center enhancements. Enjoy a simplified view of discovered resources and day 2 actions on the Resources tab aimed at helping cloud admins and end users manage cloud resources across compute, storage, networking, and security. This release provides support for greenfield and brownfield customers throughout the cloud journey, regardless of their environment and structure, by enabling them to manage resources from all backgrounds.

 

 

• Dynamic job inputs for SaltStack configurations. Help admins to make jobs more dynamic, avoiding sprawl and enable jobs to be executed as self-service. In addition, admins can choose to use the drop-down parameter list, without deep knowledge of the infrastructure, to complete tasks. This feature brings flexibility, reusability and expands the personas who consume the jobs.

 

• Custom remediations for SaltStack SecOps. Discover remediation of unsupported vulnerabilities. With this release, customers will be able to associate custom remediations to unique vulnerabilities and use it for any future encounters.

 

VMware Link

What is new in VMware vRealize Automation 8.6

 VMware vRealize Automation 8.6 has  released as on October 5, 2021. With this release, VMware has provided several enhancements and new capabilities. 

The latest release of VMware’s powerful and easy-to-use infrastructure automation platform. Designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based infrastructure management and enhanced security, vRealize Automation will improve IT agility, productivity, and efficiency so you can prepare for the future of your business. 

vRealize Automation 8.6 capabilities and enhancements will include: 

 

1. Multi-Cloud. Leverage Azure provisioning capabilities, including the ability to configure the name for the Azure NIC interfaces. 
2. Modern. Leverage the Workspace support for Code Stream to support Kubernetes. Onboard vSphere networks as an additional resource type in the onboarding workflow. 
3. Automate. Utilize the ability to configure tags in a VMware Cloud Template for machines running in VMware Cloud. Discover new Project Supervisor role for approvals. 
4. Integrate. Manage VCD-based MSP clouds in vRA. Discover the native SaltStack Configuration Automation Config via modules for vSphere, VMware Cloud and NSX. Deploy custom resources with ABX actions. Leverage third-party integrations with Puppet Enterprise support for machines without a Public IP address. Leverage Cloud Templates with dynamic vRealize Orchestrator inputs. 

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Key benefits of vRealize Automation 8.6: 

1. Faster Time to Market. Offload manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating. 
2. Ease of Use. Rapidly set up and manage multi-cloud environments throughout the lifecycle with an intuitive, self-service consumption experience. 
3. Enhanced Security and Control. Establish consistent policies across multi-cloud environments and strengthen infrastructure with native compliance management, flexible guardrails, and vulnerability remediation. 
4. Accelerated Innovation. Expedite the adoption of new, cloud-native technologies with a future-ready platform built on Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles. 

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