VMware Aria: Automation & Orchestration

A brief introduction and 5 weblinks to get you started

We often think Automation and Orchestration are the same. In simple terms, Automation is where human interactions with IT systems are minimized. A single repeated, time-consuming manual task is executed with encapsulated instructions to run on its own. Whereas, orchestration is automation of a series of tasks to create a process flow or workflow.

In today’s world, Automation is more than a buzzword. In IT, it is implemented for Incident management, Application deployment, security and compliance, and more. Many products and offerings can help us automate and orchestrate our IT infrastructure. In this post, I would briefly explain VMware Aria Automation & VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator formerly known as vRealize Automation & vRealize Orchestrator.

We’ll cover..

1. What is vRealize automation?
2. What is vRealize orchestration?
3. Capabilities of Automation & Orchestration
4. Getting started with VMware Aria Automation & VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator

vRealize Automation

VMware vRealize Automation is an event-driven infrastructure automation platform. It uses DevOps principles and open-source innovation, delivering a self-service consumption and delivery layer across VMware Cloud and public clouds. vRealize Automation components include Cloud Assembly, service broker, code stream, Orchestrator, and SaltStack Config.

Example: Creating an Ansible playbook (YAML) which will create a new vSphere VM from a template using a module

vRealize Orchestrator

vRealize Orchestrator can be used as a standalone but it is embedded within vRealize Automation. It is a development and process automation platform that provides a library of extensible workflows, to create and run automated, configurable processes. vRealize orchestrator is not limited to VMware integration and can be implemented with other third-party technologies.

Example: We can create a workflow to obtain IP addresses from DNS server and adding this information as an input to deploy a VM using a Template workflow. We can also set-up Send Notification Workflow, to send an email to the requester once the task is failed or completed.

Capabilities Automation and Orchestration

1. It is a self-serving catalog that enables users to request and provision resources and infrastructure across the cloud. It also supports extensibility, customization, and integration with 3rd party-tools.
2. Provides centralized policy and control to maintain security and compliance
3. Provides day 1 and Day 2 control for virtualized and cloud environments with intuitive configuration automation, vulnerability remediation, and compliance enforcement.
4. Orchestrator workflows have version history, packaging, and rollback capabilities, which allow for basic change management capabilities during the distribution of processes to different project stages and locations
5. My personal favorite, we can design and create a cloud agnostic blueprint that allows us to provision infrastructure, resources, and deploys the application to any public or private clouds with no extra configuration.

Getting started with VMware Aria Automation & VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator

You can find information on multiple websites, blogs, and podcasts. Below are some links.

1. VMware Aria Automation
2. VMware vRealize Automation Documentation
3. VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator
4. VMware vRealize Orchestrator Documentation
5. VMware Cloud Management Blogs

In-depth explanation along with project examples coming soon!

Happy learning.