We've talked about Aria Automation Approval Policies and Lease Polices, but haven't touched on Resource Quota Policies, we'll do that here. Resource Quota Policies are a nice way to put limits on the amount of resources (vCPU, Memory, and Disk) consumers can use, let's have a look. You can always put limits on resources in your Cloud Templates themselves, but Resource Quota Policies give you a bit more power, with the ability to put limits on Organization, Projects, and User

When I first started building VMs with Aria Automation I would configure vCPU and Memory via Properties on the VM object itself, something like this. This prompts the user for input, giving them a default, minimum, and maximum available values for vCPU and Memory (among others). There are many properties you can set at build time, for a list of all available options, click the properties link in your Cloud Template. This is how I learned to size VMs, but there is another way,

This morning while debugging an Aria Automation Cloud Template I thought to myself, I should really be backing these up, so I configured the integration with GitHub and planned to export all Cloud Templates to one of my GitHub Repositories for safe keeping. Well, that's not how it works, you can only import from GitHub. I don't love that, but I explored the option nonetheless. I also spoke to the Product Manager and opened a feature request for the push/export functionalit

Last time we discussed renaming VMs deployed with VMware Aria Automation, this blog will detail how to add those same VMs being deployed with Aria Automation to Microsoft Active Directory (AD). We'll do it with vSphere Customization Specifications, here's how. Log into vCenter and go to Menu - Policies and Profiles - VM Customization Specifications. You can see that I have three VM Customization Specifications, all for Windows VMs, one of which we already used to rename our

If you deploy VMs with Aria Automation without adjusting their names, they'll look something like this. You can rename after the fact, but it's not ideal. In a previous blog, we discussed how to rename VMs by calling a vRO Workflow (based on a subscription) and Customization Specifications, but there is another way, Custom Names! Let's explore. Custom Names are a way for you to rename VMs (and other things) deployed from Aria Automation. You build Naming Templates to perfo

Last night VMware dropped several new releases, here they are! Aria Operations 8.14 and Aria Operations SaaS (October 2023) What's New Blog 8.14 Release Notes SaaS October 2023 Release Notes Aria Operations for Logs 8.14 and Aria Operations for Logs SaaS (October 2023) What's New Blog Release Notes Aria Automation 8.14 and Aria Automation SaaS (October 2023) What's New Blog Release Notes Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.14 What's New Blog Release Notes First, let's upgrade Aria Suite

This is a follow-up to our previous blog on VMware vRealize Operations Actions. For the purposes of this blog, I am running everything on-prem, and will be attaching the Aria Operations Automation Orchestrator adapter instance to my Aria Automation embedded Orchestrator, but stand-alone instances of Orchestrator and Cloud Extensibility Proxy (CEP) embedded instances of Orchestrator are also supported, documentation here. I picture it like this. I'm running Aria Operations 8.

As you know, VMware Aria Automation includes an embedded instantiation of Aria Automation Orchestrator, which includes hundreds of Workflows. I'd like to make some of these Workflows available to consumers via Service Broker, let's do it! The documentation can be found here, but let's walk through it. For the record, I'm running an on-prem deployment of Aria Automation 8.13. First, go to Assembler - Infrastructure - Connections - Integrations and configure your Orchestrator

In October 2018, VMware acquired CloudHealth, at that time, there were two products: CloudHealth and CloudHealth Secure State. Since then, CloudHealth has been rebranded as VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth and CloudHealth Secure State is now Aria Automation for Secure Clouds. CloudHealth was designed to provide Public Cloud costing details, while CloudHealth Secure State secures and ensures compliance for Public Cloud workloads. CloudHealth is Software as a Service

In a recent blog we discussed Aria Automation Approval Policies, this blog will focus on Lease Policies. Lease Policies are generally used to put an expiration on Aria Automation deployments, things like VMs and Applications. They allow you to destroy your deployments on a schedule, say after 30 days, and reclaim the resources being used for other projects. As shown above, in Aria Automation - Service Broker - Content & Policies - Policies - Definitions, you will find all Po

VMware Aria Automation, formerly known as vRealize Automation, is being used to request and subsequently build VMs. You'd like the requests to first be approved by your Server Team, how do you do it? Aria Automation Approval Policies, let's take a look! Launch Service Broker from Aria Automation and go to Content & Policies - Policies - Definitions - NEW POLICY. There are six policy types available, select Approval Policy. I've created an Approval Policy that will apply to

If you've built VMs using vRA, you've likely noticed the naming convention, not ideal, let's change that. Out of the box, your deployments will look something like this in vSphere. Neither the vSphere name nor the DNS name is super descriptive, but we can change this! We'll use an Extensibility Action and Subscription and a Customization Specification to define our new name. Let's start with the Extensibility Action, mine is called RenameVM. My Action calls this Python Scr

You've deployed VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), you're building VMs, and you want to put them in certain vCenter Folders, how do you do it? Here are three options: Associate the vCenter Folder with the vRA Cloud Zone. Create a Resource Action that moves the VM to a specified vCenter Folder. Request the vCenter Folder as Input upon deployment. The first option is the easiest, but requires a Cloud Zone for each vCenter Folder. When creating a Cloud Zone, you can select the

Beyond vROps, vRLI, and vRA, the vRealize Suite comes packaged with the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM). It's the vRealize counterpart to the vSphere Lifecycle Manager. vRSLCM 8.6 has six main services (vRealize Cloud is a new service): Lifecycle Operations - used to manage environments, datacenter, perform upgrades, monitor requests, and adjust settings. Locker - used to manage certificates, retrieve and add licenses, and support credentials. Identity and Tenant

Yesterday was a big day! We released new versions of every product in our vRealize Suite: vROps, vRLI, vRA, vRNI, and vRSLCM. Here are the details, go get them! vROps 8.6 What's New? This release will provide an exciting new user interface for smoother navigation, new public cloud integrations, improved application management, an enhanced integration between vRealize Operations and vRealize Automation and much more that will deliver unified monitoring, visibility, and auto

In our last vRealize Automation (vRA) blog post we discussed the cluster architecture. This time we're going to discuss Cloud Assembly, most often used to create Cloud Templates that build and deploy VMs, Applications, and Services. In this example, I'd like to create a Cloud Template that builds VMs. It'll give the user the ability to request the Operating System (OS), number of vCPUs, and amount of Memory. We'll take the disk defaults and provide the network via NSX. F

Founded in 2011, SaltStack was one of the industry leaders in configuration management. They built and maintained the Salt Open project, developed a commercial platform called SaltStack Enterprise, and offer a compliance and vulnerability add-on to SaltStack Enterprise called SecOps. In October 2020, VMware acquired SaltStack, re-branded SaltStack Enterprise to SaltStack Config, and is now including it in vRealize Automation 8.3 (vRA Standard Plus and above). There are sev

This past Thursday, February 4, was GA day for new releases of products in the VMware vRealize Suite! vRealize Operations Manager, vRealize Log Insight, vRealize Automation, and vRealize Lifecycle Manager received their 8.3 updates and vRealize Network Insight went to 6.1. Here are the highlights. I've also linked the "What's New In..." blog from the VMware Technical Marketing Managers for more details. A lot of great stuff here, enjoy! 1. vROps 8.3 - https://blogs.vmwar

The automation platform in the VMware vRealize Suite is called vRealize Automation (vRA). It can be used to automate deployments in your vSphere environment and beyond, from basic VM deployments to full application builds and everything in between. vRA can be broken out into four main modules: Cloud Assembly - used to create and deploy machines, applications, and services to your infrastructure (vSphere and beyond). Documentation: https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automa