Today VMware announced the latest release of its cloud management platform vRealize Automation, former vCloud Automation Center.
VMware vRealize Automation 7.3 release notes can be found at this link.
The main features introduced in version 7.3 are:
Enhanced API’s for Deploying, Upgrading and Migrating vRA – A new set of APIs to programmatically install, upgrade, and migrate the platform itself
REST API Improvements – This release furtherly expands the pre-existing set of REST APIs devoted to consuming vRealize Automation. VMware accordingly updated it’s KB also adding new resources like the vRealize Automation Programing Guide.
Audit Logging Framework –The new Audit Logging Framework provides system-wide logging and auditing capabilities to gain additional visibility into your vRA environment. The framework is integrated with vRealize Log Insight and other syslog solution.
Integrated Health Service – The Health Service (vRPT) has now been integrated into vRealize Automation admin interface.
Parameterized Blueprints – This new feature leverages Size and Image policies to create consistent sizing policies (e.g. Small, Medium, Large, etc) intended to reduce blueprint sprawl.
Intelligent Workload Placement (WLP) – vRealize Automation can now use data in vRealize Operations (version 6.6) to provide analytics-based capacity management on vSphere. This includes the initial placement of a new instance, optimised according to performance goals, a ‘Balance’ policy used to maintain maximum headroom in case of spikes and a ‘Consolidate’ policy to leave space for large workloads.
Container Management – vRealize Automation now natively supports VMware Integrated Containers (VIC), allowing admins to add/manage VCH instances in vRA with a feature set similar traditional Docker hosts. vRA 7.3 also adds support for Docker volumes, allowing authors to create / attach volumes to containers and deploy volumes with container apps.
Config Automation Framework – vRA 7.3 adds native integration with Puppet, allowing actions such registering Puppet Master as an endpoint, drag-and-dropping Puppet nodes, dynamically querying Puppet Master, environment, and roles.
Azure Public Cloud Service Design Enhancements – A number of enhancements to the new Azure Endpoint like the ability to select, drag-and-drop software components on Azure machines in the blueprint designer, specify software properties on the blueprint designer and on the request form plus a set of pre-populated forms and dropdowns.
vRealize Automation 7.3 also introduces a deeper integration with VMware NSX. The two platforms are now integrated through APIs and NSX is now a dedicated Endpoint, providing logical separation from the vSphere Endpoint(s).
The control of NSX Endpoints is now extended to:
NSX on-demand NAT
- Port forwarding rules can be configured at design time
- Rules can be ordered
- Rules can be added, removed, and reordered after you create them
NSX Security Group and Tag Management
- Able to add existing NSX security groups or tags to a running application
- Able to disassociate NSX security groups and tags from applications
High Availability Automated for NSX Edge Services
- Edge high-availability mode in the blueprint provides high availability for all edge services to an application when it is deployed
- Configurable per blueprint based on application availability needs
- Use custom properties to determine high availability at request time
- Adds high availability for load balancing, NAT, firewall, and so on
NSX Edge Size Selection
- Able to specify deployment size for NSX Edge Services Gateway (ESG)
- Configurable per-blueprint based on application needs or scale
- Uses custom properties for size selection at request time