vRA and NSX Integration Series

It should be no surprise that VMware is putting a lot of time and energy around the benefits of vRealize Automation and NSX. The #BetterTogether campaign has taken off and just about anyone touching either of these solutions should be able to articulate that message by now. I’ve been focusing on the integrations between vRA and NSX partly because it’s within my charter, but primarily due to being huge believer in the transformative nature of the technology behind it. Whether at a VMUG, in a briefing, building internal content, or in my home office as my puppy, Millie, begs to go out and play just as I start recording a video (it’s like clockwork!), this has easily become one of my favorite topics.

While the benefits are easily articulated and demos [usually] go off without a hitch, much of the feedback I get suggests there’s a perceived complexity with the integration. “Not so!”, says I. While complex is a relative term, integrating vRA and NSX doesn’t have to be, especially if you have a basic understanding of the two solutions individually. Although I will agree on at least one thing — while documentation is generally getting better, there’s still a major gap in prescribed [how-to] content.…

Adding a Network Selection Drop-Down in vRA 7

Ever since the early days of vCAC, customers have needed the ability to provide a variety of additional control options to vRealize Automation’s self-service consumer. I’m specifically referring to inputs and selection options that are made available to the consumer during request time. Some of the most common examples include fields for plain text input, drop-down menus, checkboxes, value lists, and text descriptors. The input or selection can be basic information or used for downstream processing during machine provisioning.

Custom Properties

There are hundreds (thousands?) of use cases and unique requirements that make it just about impossible for VMware to deliver every option as an out of the box. function. Instead, vRealize Automation (vRA) leverages Custom Properties to provide a quick-n-easy way to control many aspects of machine provisioning. Custom properties can be used across much of vRA’s configuration constructs, including Blueprints, Business Groups, Compute Resources, Reservations, and Endpoints (in that order of precedence). Custom properties are a core component of vRA’s massive extensibility engine and are often used in collaboration with the Property Dictionary, Property Groups, vRealize Orchestrator (via workflow stubs), and the new Event Broker. If you’re unfamiliar with custom properties and these concepts, be sure to read the documentation.…