vRealize Automation 7 – New Architecture & Installation
Today VMware announced the long awaited new version of their cloud management product vRealize Automation 7 (vRA7). This new release, previously known under codename Bellatrix, is a major overhaul and includes many new features and enhancements.
vRealize Automation 7 Architecture
First of all, vRealize Automation got a whole new architecture moving the first functionality from .NET/Windows to CAFE, so native in the vRealize Appliance. The new vRealize Automation appliance now includes Ochestrator (extensibility), Blueprint Designer, reservations and business groups.
In vRealize Automation 6.x a fully distributed high available installation consisted of eight virtual machines. Two instances of each of the following:
- vRealize Automation Appliance.
- vRealize Orchestrator.
- Identity appliance or SSO.
- vRealize Automation IaaS server.
In vRealize Automation 7 this got a lot easier. The new vRealize Automation 7 appliance now includes vRealize Automation core services, vPostgress database, Embedded vRealize Orchestrator instance and the virtual IDentity Manager (vIDM).
To enable high availability for these components you simply install a second instance. So for a fully distributed high availability installation you only need two virtual appliances.
vRealize Automation 7 Installation
The installation of vRealize Automation has not always been one of the strongest points of the product. But now with vRealize Automation 7, VMware completely revamped installation process. Everything starts with the deployment of a single vRealize Automation appliance. After that, it’s a wizard driven installation supported by agents which locates the other installation candidates. The new management-agents need to be pre-installed on the Windows (.net) servers which are being used for the vRealize Automation environment.
Installation types
In the installation wizard you can select two different installation types:
- Simple Install – wizard-driven walk through for installing vRA in a monolithic (non-distributed) instance
- Enterprise Install – wizard-driven walk through for installation all components in a distributed, highly-available vRA instance.
The minimal installation can be used for a test or POC like environment with only one vRealize Automation Appliance and one Windows server. So no redundancy and not suitable for production. The Enterprise installation is a fully distributed installation which advises users on load balancing, the creation and placement of certificates and the creation of the database.
Management agents
Next up are the new Management agents. These agents are used for the Windows component server(s) to communicate with vRealize Automation and Connectivity and it delivers communication between vRealize Automation virtual appliance and the AWS and vCloud software deployments. You can install the agents by using an install script for all endpoints (vSphere / AWS / vCloud Air).
The management agents were introduced in vRealize Automation 6.2 to collect logs but they now got an additional function. They enable vRealize Automation to automate the installation of the Windows IaaS components and can be installed via Command Line or UI. Customers can use their traditional software management tools to push out these agents to Windows servers Once deployed you can run the Installation Wizard and execute the Installation.
Other articles in the series vRealize Automation:
- Infoblox & vRealize Automation, Setup IPAM endpoint
- Infoblox & vRealize Automation, Install Infoblox IPAM plugin
- Setup provisioning of vCloud Air workloads
- Setup a vCloud Air Endpoint in vRealize Automation
- Setup Postgres database high availability for vRealize Automation
- Setup vRealize Automation Cost profiles & currency
- Speed up vRealize Automation life cycle updates
- Configure vRealize Automation not to delete virtual machines
- Track infrastructure changes with vRealize Automation Data Collection
- MS SQL high availability support for vRealize Automation
- Setup the vRealize Automation prerequisites for IaaS
- vRealize Automation: How to …
- Downgrade the vRealize Automation license
- vRealize Automation 7 – New Architecture & Installation
- vRealize Automation 7 – Improved Authentication
- vRealize Automation 7 – Converged Blueprints
- vRealize Automation 7 – LifeCycle Extensibility
- How to transfer vRealize Automation payload to Orchestrator
- Automation is not difficult with vRealize Automation 7
- vRA custom host name using Orchestrator and Event Broker
- How to deliver Database-as-a-Service with vRealize Automation
- Prepare Windows for vRA software deployment
- Missing endpoints after upgrading to vRealize Automation 7.3
- How to run Containers as a Service – Part 1
- How to run Containers as a Service – Part 2
- Infoblox & vRealize Automation, IP Address Management (IPAM) made easy
- How to run Containers as a Service – Secure Docker communications
- Create a new database user using vRealize Automation XaaS
- Infoblox & vRealize Automation, Infoblox NIOS setup
- Infoblox & vRealize Automation, vRA setup
- vRealize Automation failed requests monitoring
- vRealize Automation 7.2 released
- How to specify a deployment target when using vRealize Automation
- vRealize Suite just became a lot easier with Lifecycle Manager
- LAMP Stacks made easy with VMware and Puppet
- How to: Deploy vRealize Automation 8
- Create Custom Names with vRealize Automation 8
- Kubernetes as a Service
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Erik Scholten
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Can you please confirm , whether we get “Software Components” tab in minimal installation. My installation is complete but the “Software Component” tab under Design is not visible. I have the proper roles assigned i.e. “Software Architect” for the user.
Do you have the correct license for vRA 7? Software components requires vRA 7 Enterprise which in turn shows the Software Components under the Design tab.
Hi Erik,
I am trying to install VRA 7.0 but somehow set up is stuck on
prerequisite checker screen. Could you please suggest what could be the
issue. I installed IIS and .Net on the Iaas server and tried but same
issue.
What’s the error you get?
Check the Windows configuration against these 4 server requirement categories: http://pubs.vmware.com/vra-70/index.jsp#com.vmware.vrealize.automation.doc/GUID-9E8E8C4F-FCD1-4356-8270-EA10C5D609A4.html