Existing VMware Cloud on AWS customers have another Add-On service within their SDDC portal. The new Add-On tile provides a 45 day trial of vRealize Automation Cloud! I started a blog series about how vRealize Automation Cloud can provide a rich set of Self-Service capabilities for VMware Cloud on AWS and you can read that blog here. Just to kick things up a notch customers can now click a button and setup vRealize Automation Cloud right from the SDDC portal. This enables a quick and easy way to get started with providing Self-Service and Automation on top of VMware Cloud on AWS.
vRealize Automation Cloud add-on tile integration with VMware Cloud on AWS console is expected to be available in VMware’s Q2’FY’21.
When you activate the vRealize Automation Add-On here are just a few of the benefits:
- Predefined Blueprints and Cloud Setup as well as Governance via Lease Time Policy
- Self-Service Catalog for Hybrid Cloud
- Consumption of SDDC Storage and Network Policies and Objects
- DevOps for Hybrid-Cloud via Code Stream Features
- Prebuilt constructs for easy IaaS consumption and Day 2 Management
Here is how it works. Just log into your VMware Cloud on AWS account and click on your SDDC. Select the “Add Ons” tab. You may see a few tiles, like HCX and Site Recovery but you will also see a vRealize Automation Cloud tile as well.
Once you click the Activate button you will be prompted for an API Token, vCenter Username and Password (for the existing SDDC).
The API Token can be generated from the API Tokens page in Cloud Services. It is recommended the API token be set to never expire. If you create a token that expires then VMware Cloud on AWS operations from vRealize Automation Cloud will stop working when the token expires. You would need to update the token to continue functionality.
For more information on how to generate API tokens via the Cloud Services portal click here.
Once you click Activate from this Wizard then the setup starts. The process of getting vRealize Automation Cloud happens in the background and will take approximately 30 minutes. Once the process is complete then your Add-On tile will display Active and you can open vRealize Automation Cloud from the tile.
Once the 45-day trial is active you will see some additional services in the Cloud Services portal dropdown. The additional services will be VMware Cloud Assembly, VMware Code Stream & VMware Service Broker. These will also include a starter catalog item and blueprint, as well as network, security and machine and storage sizings.
Service Broker is the Self-Service Catalog service. Once you click Service Broker link you will see a pre-created Catalog Item that will deploy a machine to your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.
That catalog item will deploy a machine and infrastructure that is defined in the pre-built blueprint. vRealize Automation blueprints are YAML based and can be version controlled in GitHub or GitLab. This provides a IaC methodology for declaring and iterating your hybrid cloud infrastructure. Here is what a sample blueprint looks like:
In the blueprint example you will see that there is a single VM on the canvas. Also on the right hand side the YAML code is presented. There are inputs for size of the machine and the VM template you wish to use for the deployment. You can add additional inputs here if you want to, like machine name or cost center etc. The other object is a vSphere Virtual Machine.
By pre-creating the blueprint and catalog item this integration brings you one step closer to providing a set of Catalog services for your organization.
From the Catalog Item tile you can click the Request button to begin the process of deploying virtual machines to VMware Cloud on AWS. Once the deployment is complete you can interact with the deployment and the virtual machine.
So far we have seen some examples of what the activation provides from a vRealize Automation perspective. Now lets look at what has been created inside of the SDDC of VMware Cloud on AWS.
In the screenshot below we can see two additional routed networks get created in the Network–>Segments section. These networks are created for the trial experience. The vRA Cloud Trial Proxy is for the cloud proxy that gets deployed during activation, and the vRA Cloud Trial Workloads segment is for the VMs that get deployed from vRealize Automation.
Also there are some firewall rules that get added to the Gateway Firewall for the cloud proxy outbound access communication. In the management gateway section you will also see three rules for the appliances, these would normally have to be manually created outside of the trial activation process.
Now we can go the SDDC vCenter and view the VM that was deployed!
It has never been easier to get a Self-Service Hybrid Cloud setup and available for your organization!
Here are some other blogs to check out:
Deeper look at the vRealize Automation and Ansible Open Source Integration
Deploy vRealize Suite in VMware Cloud on AWS
