vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly is expanding limit types with the March feature release and on-premises release of vRealize Automation 8.1. We now offer improved methods for controlling CPU, Memory, and Storage utilization within a Cloud Zone that is assigned to a Project. Cloud Zones can be assigned to more than one Project. This allows a Cloud Administrator to overallocate resources across Projects. You could then use vRealize Operations to track utilization for compute resources and avoid too much overallocation. You still have the ability to add instance limits to the Cloud Zone, in addition to the new limits I’m covering. Let’s take a look at how to add limits at the Project level.
To set limits, navigate to Infrastructure – Projects. Open (or create) a Project and choose (or add) a Cloud Zone. Remember Cloud Zones are how we assign compute resources to a Project. Projects then control how resources are allocated to a deployment and requesting user. You can quickly check what limits have been applied to a Project by examining the Cloud zone information table, as shown in the screenshot. We can immediately see that all resource limits are set to unlimited.
Clicking a Cloud Zone in a Project opens an edit window which allows you to add limits for the Cloud Zone in the Project. The default setting for Cloud Zone limits is zero. Zero sets no limits to Instances or resources and will appear as unlimited in the information table. In the screenshot, we can see an Instance limit of 20 is applied to deployments against the Cloud Zone in the Project. Also an 80 GB memory limit, 40 vCPU limit, and 2 TB storage limit all will be considered at deploy time. These limit amounts are the maximum allowed for this Project and Cloud Zone. Each deployment counts against these limits. The flavor and template you are using for deployments will determine how many deployments can be used with this Project and Cloud Zone. The first limit to apply will take precedence. Keep in mind these limits are cumulative across your Projects. Limits in one Project are not considered against limits set within other Projects. As a result, you will want to plan accordingly across your Projects so you don’t overallocate too much.
When a limit is reached, a deployment will fail with a message indicating the limit that applies. In the first Two-tier application screenshot, a CPU limit was reached.
As we can see, when storage and memory limits apply, the deployment will fail with respective messages. Currently, storage limits only apply to vSphere deployments. One other thing to note when creating the limit, Cloud Assembly will factor in existing deployments. You will need to choose a limit that is above what is currently allocated to deployments for that Project and Cloud Zone. Stay tuned for more updates to Cloud Assembly!
