vRealize Automation – Event Broker
IT administrators need a flexible way to extend the out of the box automation with vRealize Automation. Although vRealize Automation is a purpose built cloud management tool that automates the delivery of infrastructure, applications and IT services it needs to integrate with each company’s existing infrastructure tools and processes. No automation product can anticipate and integrate with all the possible multi-vendor tools that every company will use.
In vRealize Automation 7.0 (vRA 7) we are introducing enhanced Lifecycle Extensibility through the use of an event broker – an event driven extensibility engine which provides UI-driven options for lifecycle automation. Event broker and a library of existing workflows and partner provided plug-ins on the VMware Solutions Exchange helps VMware accelerate the process of integrating multi-vendor tools into your vRealize Automation blueprints.
Value Proposition
Event broker provides out-of-the box extensibility and enables administrators to
- Plug-in new functionality without changing core code (preserves upgradability)
- Trigger external workflows from new unified blueprints
- Augment approval workflows
- Integrate and extend to external systems as part of lifecycle
Machine Provisioning extensibility
Earlier versions of vRealize automation(vRA) provided limited ways to extend machine provisioning. In vRealize Automation 7.0 , event broker provides a much broader and simpler way to integrate and extend the solutions.
For customizing a machine during provisioning, the tenant administrator simply subscribes to an event using the user interface and specifies conditions for a specific custom workflow to be triggered and publishes this event.
When a user (consumer) requests a machine (from catalog) the specific custom workflow is executed at the defined event. There is no additional code required to be developed or needs special configurations. vRA brings this powerful capability out-of-the-box.
External Approvals
Customers need the ability to define and implement third party system approvals for various IT tasks. We are introducing a new approval service that lets tenant administrator easily define policies for external system approvals.
The tenant administrator subscribes to an event and chooses an approval workflow for third party system approvals. When a user (consumer) requests a machine the registered 3rd party subscriber is triggered when it receives the event and replies with decision for the approval process to complete.
In vRealize Automation 7.0 capabilities of the new event broker include:
- Complete coverage of IaaS machine Life cycle.
- Simple admin user interface
- Approval policy with external systems
- Notification to external system on any configuration changes
Enhanced Lifecycle extensibility via Event broker addresses one of the biggest problems of extensibility — management complexity — by bringing the it directly into the user interface and providing a means of easily extending vRealize automation into the ecosystem. Customers can utilize this to solve their IT problems with no changes to their existing environment. For more information visit vRealize Automation
