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SovLabs vRealize Automation Optimization and Upgrade Analysis Tool

SovLabs has been busy developing a tool that is intended to analyse your vRealize Automation 7 environment and provide helpful feedback on areas where you can optimize.  The tool collects data on dozens of vRealize Automation 7 constructs such as number of blueprints, types of blueprints, number of business groups, network profiles, reservations, etc. and looks for key indicators to see if there is room for optimization.  It also goes a step further and looks for items that could create challenges when customers are looking to migrate to vRealize Automation 8.

The goal here is to optimize your vRealize Automation 7 environments before adopting vRealize Automation 8.  We all acknowledge that vRealize Automation 7 will be around for at least another 18-24 months –  if not longer. Even if you are making the move to vRealize Automation 8 today, you will likely still be maintaining your vRealize Automation 7 environments alongside for some time to come. By optimizing your vRealize Automation 7 environments you will be reducing the maintenance overhead required for your current environment while also making it easier to migrate and adopt your solution on vRealize Automation 8.  The more aligned the two instances are, the simpler it will be to maintain both environments side by side.

The best part is it’s free, yes that is correct I said free.  You simply register at https://www.sovlabs.com/vrealize-automation-optimization-assessment and, once registered, a member of the SovLabs team will reach out to assist you with the data collection.  The data is done using a vRO workflow that produces a JSON output. The data that is collected is non-identifying or sensitive so you don’t have to worry.  The data collected is also presented in plain text so you can review the data before you send it back to Sovlabs for analysis. If you have more than one vRealize Automation 7 environment you can run the collector for each environment and then zip all the files together for upload.

Once data collection is complete, you then head over to https://optimize.sovlabs.com/ and upload your results file.  From there the folks at SovLabs will take the result, run it through their analysis tool and produce a report detailing all the areas where you can optimize your vRealize Automation 7 environment(s).  A SovLabs technical representative will reach out to schedule a time to go over the report and send you a copy. Whether you are looking to Optimize your vRealize Automation 7 environment or gain some insight into your pending vRealize Automation 8 migration, the SovLabs Optimization and Upgrade Assessment provides great information and insights to help plan and prepare your automation path.

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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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Harness the Power of vRA with the SovLabs Property Toolkit and Template Engine – Part 2

In Part 1 of this series we walked through how you can use the SovLabs Property Toolkit and Template Engine to configure vRealize Automation (vRA) for our environment input.  In this second part of the series, we’re going to walk through setting up the Application and Compliance inputs for our particular use case.  If you are starting to see smoke, don’t be alarmed. It’s just our Genie being let out of the lamp.

In Part 1, we determined that the required options for our Application input will be:

  • WordPress
  • Microsoft SQL

Determine the Outcome

In this scenario, the selection of the application will have a significant impact on the outcome. However, while we need to think about the application, we also need to look at the larger picture. What do I mean by “the bigger picture”? Well, once we figure out the desired outcome for each of these items, we need to think about how each item relates to the environment and the choices we made in Part 1.

What if the requester chooses WordPress as the application and Production as the environment?  Alternatively, what if they choose Microsoft SQL and Development? Will the outcome of the application differ based on the environment to which it is being deployed?

Some things to consider:

  1. Do the workload specs change based on the environment selection?
  2. Do development, test, and production instances have the same CPU and Memory requirements?
  3. Do any of the integrations change based on application and environment?  
  4. Do WordPress and Microsoft SQL have the same backup requirements?
    1. Does this requirement change based on which environment the workload is being deployed to?
  5. What else could affect the outcome?

To read the entire article please see the original article on the SovLabs Blog.

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Infoblox, Custom Naming, and the Cost of Free Software

About the Free Custom Hostname Extension for vRealize Automation

Here at SovLabs we are always helping our audience make the decision to either “build” or “buy”, when it comes to VMware automation solutions. Recently, we have been involved in some discussions about the free Infoblox plugin for vRealize Automation. Specifically,these discussions are around how the free Infoblox plugin for vRealize Automation handles custom host naming. That discussion prompted us to consider all such customizations and the support required when when they are integrated with vRealize Automation.

Integrate with vRA
Custom Automation Considerations

There are a few issues at play here, including:

  • How do the different components of your solution work together?  
  • Was it designed wholistically or were pieces added on as you needed them?   
  • Did one source develop all of the components, or are they pulled piecemeal from multiple places?
  • If one source did all of the development – are they still available?  
  • Who is supporting the development work going forward?

Read the entire article written by Josh Andrews here on the SovLabs Blog.

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Road to Automation with VMware vRA – GSS Company Profile

In my previous article The Road to automation with VMware vRA I discussed I would be published a company profile for my fictitious company GSS.  In this article we will be digging into GSS to take a look at where it is today, its challenges, processes, systems, and automation use cases.

Company: (GSS) Gregarious Simulation Systems
Profile: Successful Video Game Manufacturer
Employees: 1200+
IT Staff: 80+
vSphere Sockets: 200+
Managed VMs: 3000+
Server Build Team: 12
Environments: Development, Test, Stage, Production

Continue reading “Road to Automation with VMware vRA – GSS Company Profile”

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Service Providers Benefit from SD-WAN

Service Providers Benefit from SD-WAN

Service Providers Benefit from SD-WAN

VMware’s signing of a definitive agreement to acquire VeloCloud signals a strong commitment to build deeper partnerships with communication service providers (CSPs) by providing solutions that align with their business objectives. These CSP priorities include offering of new services, delivering a superior quality of experience, improving agility and lowering costs.

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