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vRA8 with OneFuse: IPAM Integration

In this article, we are going to create a vRA8 blueprint that utilizes the OneFuse IPAM module to provide IPAM integration for provisioned workloads.  We won’t just be supplying IP information to vRA8 in this example, OneFuse will determine the network placement as well.  We will have a future article on using intelligent placement decisions and dynamic assignments within OneFuse as well as using vRA to drive network placement with OneFuse using vRA network profiles and constraint tags.

Continue reading “vRA8 with OneFuse: IPAM Integration”
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vRA8 with OneFuse: DNS Integration

In this article we are going to add OneFuse DNS support to a vRA8 blueprint.  If you have been following my previous articles you probably have an idea of how this is going to work.  We are going to build upon the examples from previous articles by leveraging the same blueprint that we created in the article “vRA8 with OneFuse: IPAM integration”.

By the end of this article, we will have a blueprint that leverages OneFuse to generate a name, assign Network/IP Address as well as create DNS records for the deployed machine.  Although these examples are simple and static, they are setting the foundation for future articles where we will dive into creating more flexible and dynamic blueprints.

Continue reading “vRA8 with OneFuse: DNS Integration”
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OneFuse Property Toolkit is now FREE

Yes you read the title correct. Cloudbolt is now giving away the Property Toolkit capability that is part of OneFuse for FREE. If you are not familiar with the OneFuse or its Property Toolkit capabilities below are some links to help get you familiar:

The OneFuse Property Toolkit is the Swiss army knife of the OneFuse Platform.  It can be used in many different ways to assist you in meeting your automation needs.  It can be used to simplify configurations, define business logic as configuration, build simple logic or tackle the most complex problems.  In its simplest form its meta-data that can be used as a reference offering simple name value pairs that can be used as a reference for decision making.  In its most powerful form it can contain logic, decision trees, platform abstractions, and much more.

It’s a blank canvas waiting to solve the needs of any organization.  A common use for the Property Toolkit is to centrally define organizational business logic as configuration that can be used to standardize across different tools allowing you to centralize your business logic and maintain standards across the organization.

Stay tuned for more articles on how you can use this awesome free capability to help achieve your automation goals.

To stay up to date on the latest OneFuse developments, ask questions, share use cases, or just say hello head over to https://onefuse.cloudbolt.io and signup for the OneFuse community.

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Getting Started with OneFuse Property Toolkit

The OneFuse Property Toolkit is the Swiss army knife of the OneFuse Platform

The OneFuse Property Toolkit is the Swiss army knife of the OneFuse Platform.  It can be used in many different ways to assist you in meeting your automation needs.  It can be used to simplify configurations, define business logic as configuration, build simple logic or tackle the most complex problems.  In its simplest form its meta-data that can be used as a reference offering simple name value pairs that can be used as a reference for decision making.  In its most powerful form it can contain logic, decision trees, platform abstractions, and much more.

Continue reading “Getting Started with OneFuse Property Toolkit”
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Request vRealize Automation Blueprints with Ansible Tower

Integrating Red Hat Ansible Tower with VMware vRealize Automation is a very popular enterprise automation solution. SovLabs has several excellent integrations that can help you accomplish and scale your integration of these two powerful cloud automation tools. This article is the first in a series of four articles covering the integration of Red Hat Ansible Tower with VMware vRealize Automation, based primarily on the content and discussion from our webinar with Red Hat Ansible on May 22.

  1. Requesting a vRealize Automation deployment from Ansible.  How, and why you would want to do it.
  2. The SovLabs Ansible Tower Module for vRealize Automation with Static Inventory
  3. The SovLabs Ansible Tower Module for vRealize Automation with Dynamic Inventory
  4. The SovLabs Ansible Tower Plug-in for vRealize Automation CM Framework

Requesting a vRealize Automation deployment from Ansible

With Ansible Tower quickly growing in popularity, many developers and system administrators want to be able to utilize Ansible Tower to deploy infrastructure.  This type of deployment is the subject of many debates within enterprise organizations, especially those with cloud teams trying to develop standards while enforcing policy and governance across organizations.

The good news is that organizations no longer have to choose between solutions. If you want to use Ansible to develop standards while enforcing policy and governance across organizations, now you can.  Using the solution below you can request workloads from Ansible facilitated by vRA to enforce the desired standards and governance policies. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Continue reading “Request vRealize Automation Blueprints with Ansible Tower”
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How to Create vRealize Automation Global Properties with the SovLabs Property Toolkit

If you have not yet read my recent series Harness the Power of vRealize Automation (vRA) with the SovLabs Property Toolkit and Template Engine, I would encourage you to do so. This 3-part series will provide you with some interesting ways to get more out of vRealize Automation using the software solutions provided by SovLabs. In this article I will be coveringa topic closely related to my previous articles and showcasing even more value when you use the SovLabs Property Toolkit.

Global Properties

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, “Is there a place to define global properties in vRA?” throughout my career, I probably could have retired by now.  The unfortunate answer to this question has always been “it does not”, but there is a way to apply properties to every request. Keep reading.

The Old Way

The old way to define global properties in vRA was to add the properties you wanted applied globally to each and every endpoint you had configured in vRA.  So, if you had 25 endpoints and 20 properties you ended up have to enter 500 properties and 500 values. This method leads to inevitable typos, finger fatigue, and management overhead every time you need to update a value for any one of those properties or add a new property.

To see the new more efficient way read the rest of the article on the SovLabs blog site here.

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SovLabs Plugin Release 2019.8.0 Now Available

SovLabs has released it’s latest version of it’s vRealize Automation plugin version 2019.8.0. Among other key updated it is Certified for vRealize Automation 7.6 as well as ServiceNow Madrid. Below is the full list of updates available in this release:

What’s New?

  • Certified for vRA 7.6!
  • SovLabs Licenses
    • A new SovLabs 2019.x license key is needed in order to use the SovLabs 2019.x Plug-in
    • A 2019.x license key is needed in order to use the SovLabs ServiceNow Connector 2019.8.0
  • SovLabs EULA has been updated!
    • During install of the SovLabs Plug-in and running SovLabs Configuration, the EULA now refers to https://sovlabs.com/eula
  • SovLabs Template Engine
    • Added new tags, filters and improvements!
      • Tags: decrement, ifchanged, increment
      • Filters: abs, at_least, at_most, ceil, compact, concat, floor, lstrip, newline_to_br, reverse, round, rstrip, slice, sort_natural, strip, uniq, url_decode and url_encode
      • Improvements
        • Allow “.” in variables
        • Enhanced parser error messages
        • Allow Unicode forward and backward “fancy” quotes
  • Puppet Enterprise
    • Added “2018.1” and “2019.1” into the Version dropdown list.  Previously verified on 2018.3.4 and 2019.2.0
  • ServiceNow CMDB
    • Added “Madrid” into the Version dropdown list.  Previously verified on 2019.2.0
  • Backup as a Service for Veeam
    • Support for Veeam 9.5, Update 4
    • Performance improvement for Backup Jobs with a large number of VMs
  • Backup as a Service for Cohesity
    • New Day2 Feature: Ability to Recover Virtual Disk that allows recovering an entire virtual disk – either by overwriting the existing disk or recovering to a new (unmounted) device

ServiceNow Connector 2019.8.0

What’s New?

  • A 2019.x license key is needed in order to use the SovLabs ServiceNow Connector 2019.8.0
  • Supports Madrid
  • Added ability to enable the vRA Business Group to be selected at request time by the end-user in ServiceNow when ordering the Catalog request

Import Catalog Item / Modify Catalog Item Mapping Page Enhancements

  • New field for “Override vRA Business Group?”
  • Updated “Constant” label to “Template”

Improvements/Resolved Issues

  • Error logs in ServiceNow and ServiceNow Mid Server
  • ServiceNow request to show useful error when the request is unable to be generated in vRA
  • Hid unnecessary fields during Import/Modify for a vRA Blueprint

Resolved Issues

  • Ansible Tower
    • Fixed issue for Static Inventory failing when no dynamic groups are defined.
  • Ansible Tower for CM Framework
    • Fixed error reporting to report back correct error when an IP address is not defined
    • Fixed the error similar to the following: “[WARNING]: * Failed to parse /tmp/awx_inventory_rNDKxh/tmpqWOvv0 with script plugin: Inventory script”
    • Fixed error when accidentally appending trailing “/” to vRO Hostname when creating the Ansible Tower Endpoint
  • Snapshot Management
    • Fixed issue for missing ID(s) from incomplete vRA CAFE/IaaS data that prevented successful mapping to managed VMs in vCenter.  Added checking and additional logging.
  • IPAM Framework
    • Fixed Release IP to release the IP address correctly

To see previous feature releases please visit the SovLabs support website here.