Tag: vRealize Automation

Automation

vRealize Automation 8.5

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware recently announced general availability of vRealize Automation 8.5. I will dive in what’s new in vRA 8.5, what they fixed and what’s still pending there.

Generally speaking, vRealize Automation 8.5 adds capabilities focusing on the areas of multi-cloud support with Azure, extensibility with vRealize Orchestrator and ABX as well as expansion of network automation capabilities with vSphere and NSX.

What’s new in vRealize Automation 8.5

  • Project Administrator can act as Approver for all approval requests – When creating an approval policy, administrators can select a Project Administrator (for the project in which the approval was triggered) as the approver.
  • Configure when IP address from IPAM is released – You can configure how long it takes for an IP address to be released from allocation once it is no longer used. This allows for faster provisioning of new workloads where IP addresses are scarce.
  • Limit the number of namespaces for a project on a Kubernetes zone – The maximum number of supervisor namespaces that can be deployed for the project on a given K8s zone now has a configurable limit.
  • VMware vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vRealize Automation 8.5 – The updated vRealize Automation plug-in supports scripting objects generation such as cloud accounts, cloud zones, projects, tags, and CRUD operations to build your own content.
  • Enable resources across Azure regions to be added to the same resource group – An Azure resource group is created in an Azure region. However, resources from any Azure region can be added into it. This feature enables admins to add resources from other regions into the Azure RG.
  • Snapshot management for Azure disks – You can now pass the resource group name, encryption set, and network policy while creating the disk snapshot.
  • Ability to enable/disable boot diagnostics for Azure VMs – Day 2 – You can enable/disable boot diagnostics for Azure VMs as a day 2 action.
  • Support for NSX-V to NSX-T migration with vSphere 6.7 – vRealize Automation NSX-V to NSX-T migration now supports migrating deployments that are running on vSphere 6.7.
  • Support for existing global security group as part of NSX-T Federation – vRealize Automation can now discover global security groups configured under NSX-T global manager. These groups can be leveraged in network profiles and VMware Cloud Templates to build deployments.
  • Custom Roles API – The APIs for Custom Roles (RBAC) are now available (Create, Read, List, Update, Delete).
  • Notifications – The Service Broker administrator can view the list of available email notification scenarios and enable or disable them for all users in their organization.
  • Terraform runtime environment authentication – This release introduces authentication for adding Terraform service runtime version to vRA for more secure environments.
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VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisory – VMSA-2018-0009 – vRealize Automation Vulnerabilities

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory: VMSA-2018-0009 – vRealize Automation updates address multiple security issues.

This advisory documents the remediation of two issues: one important (DOM-based cross-site scripting vulnerability which may lead to the compromise of the vRA user’s workstation) and one moderate (Missing renewal of session tokens vulnerability which may lead to the hijacking of a valid vRA user’s session).

VMSA-2018-0009 – DOM-based Cross-site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability

CVE-2018-6958 – vRealize Automation contains an important vulnerability that may allow for a DOM-based cross-site scripting (XSS) attack. Exploitation of this issue may lead to the compromise of the vRA user’s workstation.

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VMSA-2018-0003

VMware Security Advisory – VMSA-2018-0006 – vRealize Automation, vSphere Integrated Containers, and AirWatch Console

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory: VMSA-2018-0006 – vRealize Automation, vSphere Integrated Containers, and AirWatch Console updates address multiple security vulnerabilities.

This advisory documents the remediation of two issues: one critical (deserialization vulnerability which may allow code execution in vRealize Automation and vSphere Integrated Containers) and one important (a cross site request forgery vulnerability when accessing the App Catalog in AirWatch Console).

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Install vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager

How to Install vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 1.1

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager is a relatively new tool in VMware’s portfolio. You can use it to install, configure and upgrade vRealize environments consisting in vRealize Automation, vRealize Business for Cloud, vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Operations. In this article I will show how to install vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 1.1.

You will need access to both a vCenter Server and an ESXi host 6.0 or 6.5. For running the virtual machine you will have to allocate minimum 2 vCPU and 16GB of RAM. The smallest used disk is around 3GB, and it can grow up to 135GB.

You can download vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 1.1 from My.VMware portal (you need to use your credentials to authenticate). You will end up with a 1.7GB OVA file (VMware-vLCM-Appliance-1.1.0.7-7359844_OVF10.ova), released on 12 December 2017.

Install vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager - My VMware
Install vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager – My VMware

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VMworld US 2017 – vRealize Automation Recommended Sessions

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMworld14th edition of VMworld US is coming to us on 27-31 August at the usual place, Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I play all day with vRealize Automation, so I thought to be proper to have vRA as topic of my first article on VMworld. There are plenty of sessions about vRealize Automation, sometimes it’s hard to decide, so I will signal you what brought my attention this year.

Manage, Govern, and Extend VMware Cloud on AWS with vRealize Automation [MGT2875BU]

Presented by Jad El-Zein, Principal Architect, and Charu Chaubal, Director of Technical Marketing, both at VMware, I totally recommend this breakout session for anyone interested both in vRA and AWS (either VMware Cloud on AWS or native AWS). Jad is blogging on one of the best blogs on vRealize Automation: virtualjad.com. Charu Chaubal runs the team that works on the vSphere product line and is blogging at blogs.vmware.com/vsphere. From official presentation: “Join this breakout to discover how VMware vRealize Automation adds service authoring and delivery, governance, lifecycle management, and enterprise extensibility to your VMware Cloud on AWS service.”

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vRealize Automation Part of VMUG Advantage

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMUGVMUG meetings

VMUG (VMware User Group) is an independent customer-led organization created to spread the knowledge on VMware related solutions through events, training and collaboration. Probably their best known “products” are VMUG meetings (looks like at least a meeting in any given day!). Number of local communities is always increasing, currently being around 230, ranging from 1 member in Mumbai chapter to over 5000 for Boston VMUG.

Second point of interest is around VMUG Advantage, a subscription program with some great offers:

  • EVALexperience (365-day evaluation license for personal use in a non-production environment)
  • 20% Discount on VMware Training Classes
  • 20% Discount on VMware Certification Exams
  • 35% Discount on VMware Certification Exam Prep Workshops (VCP-NV)
  • 35% Discount on VMware Lab Connect
  • $100 Discount on VMworld Attendance

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