By now you’ve probably heard about the upcoming vRealize Automation 7.0 release and gotten an overview of what’s coming. In this post, I’d like to talk briefly about one of the areas we’ve been working on — our integration with vCloud Air.
The theme for this release and this feature area in particular is simplification. We’ve made it easier both to configure the connection to vCloud Air and to create blueprints.
Endpoint Configuration
In vRealize Automation 6.x, we treated vCloud Air like any vCloud Director endpoint. This meant that you had to look up the vCloud Director details in the vCloud Air portal, and the procedure was different depending on whether you had the vCloud Air subscription service or were using VPC OnDemand.
In 7.0, we’ve made this a lot easier to manage. First, we’ve introduced a new vCloud Air endpoint that exists side-by-side with the vCloud Director endpoint.
When you go to create a new vCloud Air endpoint, the address is automatically populated with the public address of vCloud Air that you already know. Supply your credentials and vRealize Automation will collect all the resources that your account has access to. And if you have ever had to set up separate endpoints for individual VDCs in vCloud Air, that’s no longer required.
Blueprint Authoring
One complaint I’ve heard about our vCloud Director integration in the past is that creating blueprints was a laborious process. There was a complex structure involving vApp blueprints and separate blueprints for the vApp components (the machines within the vApp), which required an admin to mirror the structure of an existing vApp in the vRealize Automation blueprint.
With 7.0, the blueprint authoring experience for vCloud Air has been brought into line with the experience for other endpoints such as vSphere or AWS in our unified blueprint canvas. You can drag vCloud Air machines onto the canvas and configure them like any machine. This includes layering on additional configuration such as software so you can model multi-tier applications in vRealize Automation that you can provision to vCloud Air.
With the upcoming release of vRealize Automation 7.0 it’s a great time to try out the integration with vCloud Air. Sign up for vCloud Air OnDemand and receive free credits that you can put toward your use of Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand, Object Storage, DR or future services.
For more information about the features coming in vRealize Automation 7.0, read the vRealize Automation 7.0 Spotlight Innovations Overview and watch this space for more highlights from the coming release.
