For the first time in tweet chat history, on Thursday, July 23, the VMware Cloud Foundation team welcomed the vRealize CMBU team over to Twitter to discuss how vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation work together! We asked all our 101 questions to our impressive guestlist of subject matter experts that included Josh Townsend, Rick Walsworth, John Dias, Sunny Dua, Thomas Bryant and Chris McClanahan!
Read on below to catch up on what we discussed.
Welcome to the #VMwareVCFchat! Today we’ll discuss VMware #CloudFoundation + #vRealize 101! To start, please introduce yourself and where you’re tweeting from. Use the #VMwareVCFchat hashtag in your responses and questions to our experts! (Introduction Link)
Q1: What is vRealize, and why is it important for VMware Cloud Foundation? (Link)
Josh Townsend: A cloud without cloud management is like a car without a driver (and not in the cool Tesla way). vRealize and Cloud Foundation together provide consistent hybrid cloud infrastructure AND operations.
Rick Walsworth: VMware Cloud Foundation automates IT ops and utilizes vRealize as a complete cloud management platform. You can build consistent infrastructure and operations for a consistent developer experience.
John Dias: vRealize is a solution! Build, manage and run your VMware Cloud Foundation SDDC (and hybrid cloud!) with a consistent governance and policy framework.
Sunny Dua: vRealize is brains that allow you to unlock the power of VMware Cloud Foundation. You can supercharge your SDDC by enabling the cloud surface using vRealize.
Thomas Bryant: vRealize is what allows customers to provide cloud services, monitor and scale their applications, the datacenter, and hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Chris McClanahan: vRealize is the total package when it comes to managing multi-cloud environments, especially when you pair vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation together. It’s the total package!!
Q2: POLL: What are you most curious about how #vRealize + #CloudFoundation work together? (Link)
John: No doubt about it, @vRealizeOps brings all your SDDC, @vRATeamand application components into a single view with AI assisted troubleshooting (and capacity analytics!). I think of it as joining the cloud provider with the cloud consumer, providing consistent experiences for both – with governance, policy and lifecycle management!
Rick: This is a better together story that just keeps getting better, ruthless automation provides automation for every step in the process, from deployment to provisioning, management and upgrades.
Josh: I’m curious how customers are bridging the gap between infrastructure and devops teams using vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation.
Sunny: To build a true public cloud you need the cloud constructs and vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation helps you build these constructs.
Thomas: Can I really save money with VCF and vRealize? And yes you can!
Q3: What are the top tips for installing the #vRealize Suite in SDDC Manager? (Link)
Josh: Let the tool do the work! Between VMware Cloud Foundation and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, the infrastructure admin should have very little manual labor to do.
Rick: vRealize is a core component of the VMware Cloud Foundation full stack architecture, providing complete cloud management and automation for deployments of VMware SDDC infrastructure. Be sure that SDDC Manager is configured to install the vRealize Suite LCM to ensure scale.
Chris: When installing vRealize suite on top of VMware Cloud Foundation always make sure to plan ahead and use Lifecycle Manager (LCM) to make it super easy.
Sunny: Automate Automate Automate. Or else you will die. Leverage the SDDC Manager and vRSLCM to spin up the cloud in hours instead of days.
John: We really make install easy with automation (along with patches and upgrades!), but with anything prep is key.
Thomas: Keep it simple! Use Life Cycle Manager.
Q4: What are the best practices for managing upgrades to your management platforms? (Link)
Josh: Don’t get carried away! Let the tool do the job!!! vRealize automates upgrades with vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager and Cloud Foundation has SDDC Manager for updates.
Rick: The good news is that SDDC Manager and vRealize Life Cycle Manager handles all of the updates and patches for you.
Thomas: Other than vRealize Lifecycle Manager and SDDC Manager? Plan our your environment according to best practices and avoid anything that requires ‘customization’, what you want is ‘configurability’.
Chris: Lifecycle Manager (LCM) is the way to keep your vRealize environment current and “all patched up”.
John: SDDC Manager and vRealize Lifecycle Manager take care of your upgrades; goodbye manually upgrading – just push the button!
Sunny: You just need a single button to do that with VMware Cloud Foundation and vRealize. The biggest pain point for IT is solved by the true power of Automation.
Q5: What can you do to ensure performance across your SDDC stack? (Link)
Josh: Run with purpose-built hardware like vSAN ReadyNodes or VxRail, and then do proper monitoring and maintenance using VMware’s automated tools to keep everything humming along!
Rick: vRealize Operations enables workload placement to ensure operational and business intent and then works in conjunction with VMware Cloud Foundation to ensure allocation of the appropriate resources to maximize performance.
Thomas: Leverage vRealize Operations to keep your VMs balanced, rightsized and compliant.
Sunny: With build-in capacity controls and out of box recommendations from vRealize Operations, you can ensure performance by optimally leveraging capacity. Rightsize those workloads, plan the capacity, measure performance along the way.
John: Take advantage of Workload Placement in vRealize Operations for AI-assisted, self-driving automation to predict and remediate workload contention.
Q6: Automation is everything. What mundane tasks do you wish you could automate, and how can vRealize and CloudFoundation help? (Link)
Josh: Managing capacity expansion (and knowing when the right time to do it based on resource usage). vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation are the big easy button!
Sunny: Guess what – You need all of these to have a real Private Cloud and vRealize brings all of this together for you with VMware Cloud Foundation.
Thomas: All the mundane painful things that I don’t want to do. Upgrades, password resets, ‘is my VM running?’. Just automate all the things!
John: Oh my fave is easily host configurations, CONSISTENTLY configure hosts and keep them that way. So many problems are due to misconfigured hosts VMware Cloud Foundation changes that and vRealize Operations helps monitor the compliance. Manual is bad, mm’kay?
Chris: Probably that request you get every day for the same three VMs. Automate that stack with an IaC blueprint and you go back into isolation.
Q7: Let’s talk private cloud. What are some of the biggest concerns and challenges in managing a private cloud – and how can vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation address them? (Link)
Josh: Meeting developer needs can be hard. Thankfully, VMware Cloud Foundation has VMware Tanzu Kubernetes built in. Now your private cloud can be easily managed and keep the developers happy at the same time.
Rick: Standardize the underlying infrastructure from VMware best practices, then allocate your compute, storage and networking resources from vRealize. Now you can automate the operational aspects to allow the VI admins to focus on strategic activities.
Chris: One challenge is allowing people to request resources without IT involvement but still keep everything running green. vRealize operations makes this easy.
John: Cloud means providing a catalog of services, cost/price visibility, a customized experience and standardized offerings – with an SDDC built on VMware Cloud Foundation and vRealize you’re now able to offer all of those things!
Sunny: Concerns I have seen:
1- HW is in the DC, waiting for experts to come in and design and deploy.
2- Diminishing ROI on IT investments.
3- Long upgrade cycles.
4- Security patches missing.
5- IT promises a cloud, devs get a shi**y portal.
Q8: 2020 brought new challenges for IT. How can vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation drive digital transformation and help deliver new cloud offerings? (Link)
Josh: Many of us have had to stop on a dime and pivot to support work from home and other sudden initiatives. VMware Cloud Foundation and vRealize all admins to (remotely) reallocate resources and deploy workloads on demand.
Rick: Obviously 2020 has been a challenge for most orgs, priorities like business continuity, Virtual Desktops are needed to support a large remote workforce. The ability to support hybrid cloud with the appropriate automation and management tools from vRealize.
John: Haha, 2020 amirite? Seriously, things have changed but customers are discovering how AUTOMATION allows IT to meet agility demands of devs. Your SDDC moving at cloud speed.
Chris: vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation together is the “total package” when it comes to an easy to stand up environment that can help transform your business.
Sunny: Organizations need to really wake up & not call any of this cloud.(attached). You can build a comprehensive cloud surface with CloudFoundation and vRealize. In testing times like these, you need to quickly roll out services & not isolated offerings.
Q9: For someone who is just getting started with vRealize and VMware Cloud Foundation, what are the top 3 things they should know? (Link)
Josh: Be prepared. Know what is automated for you so you can focus on the things that really matter. Let the tool do the work for you. Adopt new technologies with Tanzu on VMware Cloud Foundation to drive digital transformation.
John: 1. The community is there to help!
2. Automate easy before difficult
3. Understand your SLAs
Rick: vRealize Suite provides a full set of functionality – top 3 things to focus on:
1. Map out application performance and availability
2. Automate provisioning of resources to applications.
3. Use vRealize for monitoring and management
Sunny: I would say start with this blog. You can also listen in to this VMworld session. And this one.
Q10: Last question! If vRealize and VMware CloudFoundation were a TV show, what two characters would they be? Tell us in a GIF! (Link)
Rick: Good one. VMware Cloud Foundation would be Superman and vRealize would be Batman.
Josh: Pinky and the Brain – Genius tools that any insane mouse could manage.
John: Tubbs and Crocket.
Sunny: Rick and Michonne.
Thanks again for attending our #VMwareVCFchat with vRealize! We hope to see you next at our next tweet chat!
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