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vRealize Automation

Cumulative Update for vRealize Automation 7.6

UPDATE

Since I wrote this post, VMware have taken down this update because it causes issues with multi-tab XAAS forms. Specifically, it appears that each tab of a XAAS form will submit a request. One of these requests is “real” and will process properly, while the others will error out. As of 24th October, the hotfix is still offline. The issue with Chrome not rendering buttons was resolved in Chrome 76.

Earlier this month, VMware released the first Cumulative Update for vRealize Automation 7.6. The knowledge base article for it is available at https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/70911 The patch file is about 1.1GB.

The first resolved issue in the article is most likely the one that people are experiencing and the easiest to see – “Deployment forms are missing the Submit, Next and Cancel buttons” when viewed in Chrome 75. Below is a comparison of how the form is rendered in Chrome 75 versus Microsoft Edge.

Chrome 75 rendering Microsoft Edge Rendering
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This issue by itself is a big showstopper if an organisation uses this functionality. I suspect this update will be a “must have” for them.

VMware vRealize Automation 7.6 – What’s New

VMware released an update for vRealize Automation (vRA) at the start of this month. This was a slight increment from 7.5 to 7.6. At a high level, two key areas of change are NSX integration and the vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) user experience. The Release Notes goes into a bit more detail and I’ll be using those more detailed items as a guide for the content in this post. I will be skipping over the new NSX pieces as I don’t have those available to me.

vRealize Automation – Dealing with a disconnected/orphaned IAAS Server

Following the installation of a replacement UPS I made a horrible discovery – there was problems with my vRealize Automation setup. The first sign of what was to come was when I reviewed the console of the vRealize Automation (vRA) Virtual Applications.

Image Anyone who has had to setup vRealize Automation would probably know the sinking feeling I started feeling. Having to setup vRA again from scratch was not something I really wanted to do….

VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 1.2 – First Impressions

When VMware created the vRealize brand, they grouped together some of their most complex products under one banner. vRealize Automation (vRA) required the deployment and configuration of two components – a virtual appliance and a Windows server. The Windows server had a long list of prerequisites. In terms of operational management, using products like vRA meant ongoing work on scripts, workflows and other artifacts. The logical response to this is to create a non-production instance to protect your production instance. Moving updates to production could be achieved manually or via VMware’s Codestream product, but both approaches left a lot to be desired. vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager (vRSLCM or just LCM) is a new approach to this set of problems.

Getting LCM Running

LCM comes supplied as a “Virtual Application” where a few configuration options are required to provision it. One of the LCM-specific settings is whether you want to enable the vaguely named “Content Management”. Enabling this will cause the appliance to use 4 processors instead of 2. Once the appliance is deployed and started, the rest of the configuration happens via the web interface. Image

SQL As A Service Proof of Concept with SQL 2012 and vRealize Automation

Standing up a redundant/highly available database infrastructure can be one of the more complicated pieces of work. Doing it by hand is a long process with any points where errors could happen. It was with this in mind that I decided to use this as my first “project” with vRealize Automation.

A Brief History of SQL Server High Availability

When discussing redundancy or high availability (HA) for databases, there’s two distinct outcomes – firstly to ensure the continued delivery of the service in the event of infrastructure failure (the actual HA part) and secondly to ensure the data is kept in an orderly fashion (data integrity, no loss of data, etc). Where these two activities happen depend on the technology used.

In older versions of SQL Server, these outcomes were achieved using SQL Clustering. In SQL Clustering, the HA function was achieved at the server level by having 2 or more servers, while data integrity was maintained by the database residing on shared storage.

vRealize Automation 7.0 – First Impressions

vRealize Automation is, as VMware puts it, cloud automation software. It’s the black box where the magic that happens between a customer or consumer of your cloud services and the infrastructure the cloud sits on, providing the services we would normally associate with a cloud service such as self-service, elasticity and multi-tenant support.

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In the past, this product was known as vCloud Automation Center, or vCAC. It was rebranded along with a number of other VMware products under the vRealize banner. However, the newly branded vRealize Automation product still retains some references to vCAC.