VMware has released version 5 of its application provisioning, update life cycle, and release automation solution of application deployment topologies called vFabric Application Director. vFabric Application director is part of the VMware vFabric suite Advanced or the vCloud Infrastructure Suite Enterprise.
vFabric Application Directors allows you to declare applications and related components by making a blueprint, which later integrates with the vCloud API’s to deploy into a private or public cloud.
Version 5.0 provides the following new features:
- Update life cycle and release automation support
- Updates to code and configuration on existing deployed applications
- Change impact analysis, dependency mapping, and change notification during or post update process
- Scale existing deployed applications
- Ability to deploy to Amazon EC2
- Application provisioning to Windows-based platforms, with sample applications such as Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Exchange
- Create custom .NET applications
- Support for Windows PowerShell and Batch scripts
- LDAP support
- One click deployment of applications to self-service application users
- Export and import between different vFabric Application Director appliances
- Ability to automatically bind properties while modeling application blueprints
- REST APIs support
- Event notification support