vRA and NSX – Using Baseline Security Groups

Automation, NSX, VMware, vRA2 Comments

vRA and NSX came together back when vRA (a.k.a. vCAC) 6.0 was released, just as VMware was transitioning from vCNS to NSX. In vRA 6.x, inventory-collected security groups must be selected (checked) per Reservation prior to being available for consumption by a multi-machine blueprint (and only MMBP’s support NSX in vRA 6.x). As I’ve highlighted several times before, the latest release of vRealize Automation (7.x) delivers deeper integrations with NSX and unified service authoring capabilities to make delivering application-centric networks the new norm. See this post for how vRA and NSX are better together…I won’t repeat those details here.

With vRA 7’s deeper integration and broader use cases, one hugely powerful feature is the ability to incorporate one or more NSX Security Groups — either Pre-Existing or On-Demand — into your service design using the new Converged Blueprint Designer (CBP). You simply drag-and-drop the security group right on to the unified canvas and bind it to the desired machine components…

vra-cbp-nsx-sg

nsx security groups in vra

As a result, the provisioned machines are automatically added to the security group (Existing Security Group) or a new security group is dynamically created and bound to an existing security policy at request (On-Demand Security Group).…