Introducing vRealize Automation 7.3

We are proud to introduce the latest version of vRealize Automation — 7.3, the next iteration of VMware’s industry-leading cloud automation platform. While this is a an incremental “dot” release on the outside, it packs a punch in feature/functionality on the inside.

This release continues the trend of delivering awesome innovations, improved user experience and greater / deeper integration into the ecosystem its managing. Below is a summary of many of the new features and capabilities that are packed into vRA 7.3…

Core Platform

Enhanced API’s for Deploying, Upgrading and Migrating vRA – As part of a continued effort to broaden and enhance API’s across the entire cloud management stack, vRA 7.3 adds and exposes API’s to programmatically install, upgrade, and migrate vRA. This work also provides the foundation for up-and-coming SDDC automation and lifecycle management tools.

REST API Improvements – Customers can now deploy, configure, manage and consume vRealize Automation using a variety of programatic interfaces thanks to vRA’s ever-evolving REST API. VMware has released several new resources to help promote the use of these APIs, including the vRealize Automation Programing Guide, an updated Postman collection that includes several of the most commonly used API’s, and many additions to VMware{code}.

Audit Logging Framework – Tracking and analyzing user activity and security events is a critical enterprise requirement. vRA’s new Audit Logging Framework provides system-wide logging and auditing capabilities to gain additional visibility into your vRA environment. The VAMI-accessible Audit Log Integration option adds seamless integration with vRealize Log Insight and other syslog solutions, enables logging of essential services across IaaS and .net (windows) services, can be used to audit workflow subscriptions, IaaS services and more. The new service can be enabled in the VAMI or via API.

Integrated Health Service –

The once-stand-alone Health Service (i.e. vRPT) is now available within vRA admin interface. This service allows admins to gain visibility into overall health metrics of any supported vRA and vRO instance (7.3 or higher) for current health status and upgrade/migrate preparedness. The reports can be generated on demand or as part of a scheduled task.

Service Delivery

Parameterized Blueprints – One of the most requested features is now available out-of-the box. Parameterized blueprints leverage Size and Image policies to drastically reduce blueprint sprawl and set consistent sizing policies (e.g. Small, Medium, Large, etc). This is also one of the primary use cases for XaaS blueprints to enable “t-shirt sizing”, now a native capability.

Requesting a machine with built-in “t-shirt sizing”

Intelligent Workload Placement (WLP) – vRA and vRealize Operations (version 6.6) come together to provide analytics-based initial placement policies for vSphere machines. vRA will utilize analytics data in vRealize Operations to optimize the placement of workloads according to performance goals. A ‘Balance’ policy is used to maintain maximum headroom in case of spikes while ‘Consolidate’ leaves space for large workloads.

Container Management – vRealize Automation’s container management engine 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. This version also adds support for Docker Remote API 1.21.

Drag, drop and bind a container volume to container on the design canvas.

Config Automation Framework – vRA 7.3 adds native integration with external configuration management tools (starting with Puppet), adding the ability to drag-and-drop a Puppet configuration object directly on to a machine component in the Converged Blueprint Designer. Once dropped, you query a configured Puppet Master, Environment and Role, and dynamically assign puppet roles to a blueprint component. The integration also provides day-2 actions to unregister or delete assignments as needed.

Azure Public Cloud Service Design Enhancements – Overall enhancements to the new Azure Endpoint focuses on usability (ease of use). Azure in vRA 7.3 now enables application authors to drag-and-drop software components on to Azure machines during the design phase in the converged blueprint designer. This also provides the ability to specify software properties on the blueprint designer that can be leveraged at request time.

Adding software component to an Azure machine

Networking and Security

One of the most significant enhancements in vRA 7.3 is the deeper / richer integration with VMware NSX. This starts with native, API-based integration between vRA and NSX to expose more capabilities and improve overall performance. NSX is now a dedicated Endpoint, providing logical separation from the vSphere Endpoint(s).

On-Demand NAT Policy Enhancements

Enhanced NAT Port Forwarding Controls during blueprint authoring provides greater flexibility and feature-parity with NSX management.
NAT Day 2: Add / Remove / Reorder NAT Port Forwarding rules on a provisioned machine
Support for using IPAM (Infoblox) for IP addressing on On-Demand NAT Networks

On-Demand Load Balancer Enhancements

Enhanced Load Balancer Controls: Customize LB Algorithms, Persistence, Port(s), extended Health Monitor control, Transparent Mode (on/off), etc
LB Day 2: Add / Edit Virtual Servers, granularly modify LB policies

NSX Security Enhancements

Security Day 2: Change Security Policy (Security Groups and/or Tags) as a Day2 Action

Additional vRA + NSX Enhancements

Enable NSX Edge High Availability (configured per-blueprint)
Enable NSX Edge Deployment Size Selection (configured per-blueprint)

-+-+-+-

This is just a snapshot of the great new additions to vRealize Automation in this latest release. To learn more about vRA 7.3, refer to the resources linked below or drop a note to your friendly neighborhood VMware team.

Learn More: