Today we’re thrilled to announce the general availability of VMware vRealize Automation SaltStack Config as the configuration management component in VMware vRealize Automation. Customers using vRealize Automation 8.2 Advanced and Enterprise editions—including as part of vRealize Suite and vCloud Suite—can now access this robust tool and begin automating software configuration management tasks across their on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments.
Powered by Salt, a robust open source automation engine, this release of vRealize Automation represents the first VMware offering to integrate Salt capabilities since the acquisition of SaltStack in October 2020.
The power of Salt-based configuration management, delivered natively in vRealize Automation
This release establishes configuration management as a native offering of vRealize Automation. It will complement the existing purpose-built automation services integrated within the vRealize Automation product to address a wide range of modern use cases, including Self Service Hybrid Cloud, DevOps for Infrastructure, Kubernetes Automation, and Network Automation.
vRealize Automation SaltStack Config adds event-driven configuration automation across apps and infrastructure as a new use case and expands existing use cases with integration to the self-service IaaS consumption layer, policy and governance, and powerful DevOps capabilities such as Infrastructure as Code, infrastructure pipelining, and GitOps.
Key Capabilities of vRealize Automation SaltStack Config
vRealize Automation now delivers a powerful and dynamic set of enterprise-grade configuration management capabilities and content, allowing you to start delivering immediate results.
Declarative control with simple, human-readable IaC
vRealize Automation SaltStack Config is Python-based and expands vRealize Automation capabilities with an intuitive declarative management framework and simple, human-readable YAML. No need to learn a DSL or mess with a cumbersome coding language.
Flexible control options for multi-cloud environments
Whether you’re in the middle of a cloud migration, strictly on prem, or fully deployed on containers, vRealize Automation now allows you to abstract control of the underlying infrastructure so you can build a desired configuration once and enforce it across your entire data center and multi-cloud environment. In addition, vRealize Automation SaltStack Config is built with a highly scalable architecture, underpinned with intelligent Minions which run as in-system agents or agentlessly via API or SSH methods.
Automated self-healing
Keep critical systems properly configured to increase reliability and optimize resource utilization. vRealize Automation SaltStack Config is built on an event-driven automation engine, making vRealize Automation the only infrastructure automation platform that can immediately detect events such as configuration drift, system errors or third-party notifications and automate a response such as enforcing desired state. It can also manage complex orchestration such as multi-step system patching and restarts, cross-application workflows or even business processes such as updating ITSM, CMDB or other systems of record.
Powered by the Salt open source project
Salt open source software is constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation thanks to a vibrant and active open source community. As the automation engine under the hood of vRealize Automation SaltStack Config, users can harness the full power of Salt alongside the enterprise-grade infrastructure automation capabilities of vRealize Automation.
Fast, powerful remote execution at scale
vRealize Automation SaltStack Config goes beyond basic configuration management with a native remote execution engine capable of enacting lightning-fast change across your systems at hyperscale.
With the addition of the vRealize Automation SaltStack Config capability, vRealize Automation is extending its powerful and modern infrastructure automation platform for our customers. And while this is a significant first step, we’re excited about future vRealize Automation capabilities which will take advantage of the Salt technology to deliver new, modern and innovative infrastructure automation and security operations use cases.
If you are looking to dive deeper into vRealize Automation SaltStack Config, check out this technical blog.
Learn More
To learn more about VMware vRealize Automation, here are some more resources:
- vRealize Automation Website
- vRealize Automation SaltStack Config Website
- Follow us on Twitter @vRealizeAuto and give us a shout with #vRealizeAutomation, #vRA, #vRASaltStackConfig
