vRealize Automation 8.1 New Features Walkthrough

VMware announced the general availability of vRealize Automation 8.1 a couple of weeks ago. This update includes a wide range of new features and capabilities. Some of these items restore functionality that was lost in transitioning from 7.x to 8.x (such as Approval Policies).

Governance and Policy

Version 8.1 adds some new items under Governance and Policy. Some of these include Approval Policy, limits on resources and view-only roles.

Approval Policy

Approval Policies have been expanded to be more in line with the functionality of what was in 7.x. In one of my first impressions posts about version 8.0, I noted there was only 2 policy types (Lease and Day 2 Actions). There is now a third option called simply Approval Policy.

The new third Policy Type - Approval Policy
The new third Policy Type – Approval Policy

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Updating to vRealize Automation 7.6 Hotfix 7

I had been burned by updating vRealize Automation a little too quickly following a hotfix release. Chrome 75 caused some rendering issues in the deployment forms. These issues were resolved by Hotfix 1, which introduced some extra issues. The most visible one is the duplicate requests on an XAAS (Anything as a Service) blueprint. An example of this behaviour is shown below

Duplicate request
Duplicate request

The second issue that I’ve seen as cosmetic. It was resolved in Hotfix 2. In this issue, labels on an XAAS blueprint rendered correctly in the Designer but when requesting the blueprint via the catalog, the label text would wrap. An example of this is in the image below:

Designer vs Request rendering
Designer vs Request rendering

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PowerShell 7.0 – Cmdlet Compatibility

In my first post about PowerShell 7.0, I made mention of a major issue that most likely prevent adoption of PowerShell 6.x by Windows system administrators. This issue was the loss of functionality in 6.x, specifically that some cmdlets would not be available due to 6.x being built on .NET Core. The release of 7.0 is meant to help address this, which is the intent of this post.

Cmdlet Compatibility Approach

In reviewing the compatibility for 5.1 and 7.0, I used the management server in my home lab. This is a Windows Server 2019 virtual machine, so it shares the common set of cmdlets that Windows 10 has. As a management server, it also has some additional modules/cmdlets available:

  • Windows Server Role-based modules such as ActiveDirectory and DnsServer
  • SQLPS from the installation of SQL Server 2014
  • cmdlets associated with VMware’s PowerCLI
  • cmdlets associated with ChefDK
  • AWS’s PowerShell module

While not comprehensive, this does give good coverage of built-in, Microsoft-provided and third-party provided items.

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Automating Vulnerability Scans – Nexpose/Powershell

One of the common things I’ve seen in automation implemented by infrastructure teams is a lack of rigor around testing. That is to say, code that tests the task that is being automated is actually successful. A script could execute to its end without errors, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it actually did what it was supposed to.

This leads into a concern I’ve seen raised by stakeholders, about visibility of what is happening in an automation pipeline. One of the key stakeholders in this sort of security is the IT Security team, who often want visibility of certain outputs (like virtual machines) to determine if those are secure. In a couple of environments I’ve raised the idea of performing automated vulnerability scans on newly provisioned assets, as a way of ensuring what is delivered is at an acceptable level. By automating this task, we place no extra burden on those involved and ensure consistency.

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vRealize Automation 8.0.1 Update Walkthrough

VMware have released a minor update for vRealize Automation (vRA) 8. This is my experience of attemtping to update the instance running in my home lab.

Update Preparation

In the Release Notes for 8.0.1 there’s a section for performing an upgrade. A couple of items in this section jump out. Firstly, that the vRA product supports upgrading from vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (LCM), with a link on the process. The second is an explicit mention of disk space requirements. Based on this, the first thing I checked was the free space for the two partitions mentioned.

Checking Free Space Before Update
Checking Free Space Before Update

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VMUG vRealize Suite 2019 and vRA 8

VMUG recent added the vRealize Suite 2019 to their EVALExperience offering. For those not familiar with it, EVALExperience is part of the paid “Advantage” member in VMUG. This paid membership includes discounts on training and other benefits. This is on top of benefits of free membership.

This new addition means it’s now possible to get a 365-day license for all the components of the vRealize Suite 2019, including vRealize Automation 8. The license is for personal use in a home lab. I had previously tried updating the license on my vRA 8 installation from an Advanced to an Enterprise one, using Lifecycle Manager. It didn’t like that.

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