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VMware round of Q2 releases including vRA 7.1, vROPs 6.3, vRCS 2.1, Cloud Client 4.2, vRB 7.1 and more

Many of you may have already seen the news, but I like to create a roll up to make it easy to see what’s been newly released.  Yesterday Tuesday August 23rd 2016 VMware released a number of much awaited Management product updates.  See below for a breakdown of the updates per product.

 

vRealize Automation 7.1

 

What’s new?

vRealize Automation 7.1 is optimized for growing clouds thanks to significant improvements in the automated installation experience.

vRealize Automation 7.1 continue simplifying the primarily and secondary setup process by adding ability to automate the setup process among similar deployments leveraging the new Silent Installer. Cloud Admins are now able to scale out existing vRealize deployment by adding more vRA components and manage them automatically though the new Command Line(CLI) interface.

vRA 7.1 release is also equipped with a brand new Migration tool which allows you to perform safe and sound side by side upgrade (migration) existing vRealize Automation systems 6.2.X to the latest and greatest release. During the migration process the source production environment remains intact which guarantees a minimum downtime of the production environment.

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vRealize Code Stream – vRCS7 – vRealize Code Stream Management Pack for IT DevOps 2.0 has been released

If you haven’t looked at Code Stream, you may want to now.  Code Stream as you may or may not know is VMware’s DevOps product, but what you may not know is that with this management pack it adds some features to your vRA deployment that you may be interested in.  Now this isn’t totally new it is in version 2.0 as you can see.  The management pack allows you to utilize Code Stream to automate the SDDC lifecycle of templates, blueprints, workflows, dashboards, scripts and more within vRA.  This is pretty cool right.  If you want to use a blueprint for two tenants your can automate the lifecycle of these blueprints which I think is awesome.

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vRealize Code Stream 1.1.0 has been released

Version 1.1.0 of vRelize Code Stream has been released today.  For those who are not familiar vRealize Code Stream is a release automation tool for continuos integration / continuos development environments allowing for a rapid development, testing, and provisioning of environments.

New features in this latest release include:

Getting Started Tab – Provide step-by-step instructions on how to do initial vRCS configuration and create a release pipeline with the help of videos and documentation.

Release Pipeline Modeling Enhancements – Drag & Drop Stages and Tasks, Copy Tasks and Cancel pipeline execution.

Simplified Endpoint Registration Support for Jenkins server and vRealize Automation server.

Enhanced vRealize Automation, Script & Artifact Management tasks

Improved Troubleshooting – pipeline execution comparison, log collection and viewing 

Import/Export APIs – REST APIs to import and export pipeline template. 

Support for international characters sets in pipeline templates and pipeline execution data

Minor Release Dashboard enhancements

Download and documentation links are below:

Download Landing Page: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info/slug/infrastructure_operations_management/vmware_vrealize_code_stream/1_0

Documentation Landing Page: https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vrcs-pubs.html

Release notes: https://www.vmware.com/support/codestream/doc/vrealize-code-stream-10-release-notes.html

vRealize Code Stream Product web page: https://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-code-stream

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vRealize Code Stream – vRCS 1.x – Installation and Configuration

For those of you who are fortunate enough to be able to get a trial for Code Stream this article will walk you through the installation and initial configuration of the product.  Code stream as the name suggest is part of the vRealize product line and shares the same identity appliance and virtual appliance as vRealize Automation.  Because of this I will be referring to articles I have already written for portions of the installation in an effort to not re-invent the wheel.

Installing vRealize Code Stream

1. For instructions on how to install the vRealize Code Stream Identity Appliance please see Installing the vCAC 6.0 Identity Server.

*Note – The instructions in the above referenced article may vary slightly from vRCS 6.0 identity appliance, however it should be close enough that you should not have any issues following along.

It is recommended that you configure the Active Directory settings in the Identity Applaince which is not covered in the above post, but is straight forward.

2. For instructions on how to install the vRealize Code Stream Virtual Appliance please see Installing the vCAC 6.0 Virtual Appliance.

*Note – The instructions in the above referenced article may vary slightly from the vRCS Virtual Appliance, however it should be close enough that you should not have any issues following along.

On step 21 input the Code Stream License Key instead of the vRA license key, or both if you like.

3. For instructions on how to setup Tenants in vRealize Code Stream please see Adding Tenants in vRealize Autoamtion 6.x.

On step 7 you will not be able to add a user to the “Infrastructure Administrator” role as that is a construct of vRealize Automation.  If you are running code stream and vRealize Automation on the same virtual appliance you can add users/groups to this role.

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VRealize Code Stream – vRCS 1.0 – Laying the foundation with Git and Jenkins Part 2

In part 1 of this article we deployed both GitLab and Jenkins, configured a Git project and connected it to the Eclipse IDE.  In this article we will focus on configuring the Jenkins server to work with our GitLab repository and crate a Jenkins job to build our project.

Configuring Jenkins for GitLab

1. Before we can create a job we need to add some plugins to the Jenkins server for GitLab.  We need to make sure we have the following plugins installed by going to the Jenkins server, the Manage Jenkins, and then Manage Plugins.

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2. Next go to the “Installed” tab to see which if any of the needed plugins are already installed.  The plugings that are needed are:

  • Git Client Plugin
  • Git Plugin
  • GitHub API Plugin
  • GitHub Plugin
  • GitLab Plugin

 

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