Sam is a Senior Technical Marketing Manager for Automation in the Cloud Management Business Unit, and is based in the UK. Sam specialises in Cloud and Network automation and holds multiple high-level qualifications including VCDX7-CMA (#204) and VCIX-NV. Sam also blogs on www.definit.co.uk and you can follow him on Twitter @sammcgeown.

Recent Posts

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid with vRealize Automation

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The following blog post demonstrates using vRealize Automation to deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) management and workload clusters. VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid provides a consistent, upstream-compatible implementation of Kubernetes, that is tested, signed, and supported by VMware. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is central to many of the offerings in the VMware Tanzu portfolio. This example touches Read more...
vRA

What’s new in vRealize Orchestrator 8.1

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Last month we announced the latest release of vRealize Orchestrator, today I want to dive a little deeper into some of the newly released functionality. To recap, these are the main features vRealize Orchestrator 8.1 brings to the table: Git integration – branch configuration support Additional scripting languages Run and debug actions Debug workflow schema Read more...

Custom Forms Enhancements – CSS and Complex Input Types

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The March 2020 release of vRealize Automation (and vRealize Automation 8.1) has two new enhancements to the Custom Forms capabilities in Service Broker: Custom CSS, and Complex Input Types. Custom CSS allows you to import a stylesheet to customise the appearance of forms, which allows you to create a richer user experience. Complex Input Types Read more...

vRealize Automation Action Based Extensibility (ABX) now supports PowerShell

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In addition to Python and NodeJS, vRealize Automation now supports PowerShell as a scripting language for writing Action Based Extensibility (ABX) code. Actions are executed based on lifecycle events, using functions-as-a-service (FaaS), to extend the functionality of the platform. PowerShell is only supported for on-premises deployments, and requires an appliance deployed alongside the Cloud Proxy Read more...

DevOps for Infrastructure: From VI Admin To DevOps Champion

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To really understand how DevOps can be useful to the virtualisation administrator, we have to take a look at what DevOps is, what problems it tries to solve, and how it solves them. Wikipedia describes DevOps as: a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops) which aims to shorten the Read more...

Getting started with the vRealize Automation Terraform Provider

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In my previous post, Infrastructure as Code and vRealize Automation, I talked about the principles of Infrastructure as Code and how vRealize Automation can help you put some of those ideas into action. I also mentioned Terraform as a complimentary technology to vRealize Automation. There are several VMware providers for Terraform (including vSphere, NSX-T, vCloud Read more...

Infrastructure as Code and vRealize Automation

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Infrastructure as Code Infrastructure as Code is a concept that was created to solve the problems that are faced managing infrastructure in the “Cloud Age” by applying principles more often used in software development. Modern, cloud-like infrastructure is dynamic in nature and can lead to server sprawl, configuration drift and “snowflakes”. How do you ensure Read more...

Extending vRealize Automation Custom Forms with vRealize Orchestrator

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Within the vRealize Automation Service Broker is the Custom Forms designer which, much like previous versions of vRealize Automation, allows catalog administrators to create custom forms. These can be used to create a more dynamic and engaging user experience, especially for business users who may not have the knowledge (or desire) to make technical decisions. Read more...

Project level deployment sharing in vRealize Automation Cloud

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With the latest feature release in October 2019, vRealize Automation Cloud users can configure projects for project level deployment sharing, or for deployments to be owned by a specific user. When creating or editing a Project, you have a new toggle switch to enable or disable Deployment sharing: When Deployment sharing is enabled each member Read more...