vRealize Automation 7.1 in now Generally Available for download. This release brings several features and enhancements, but primarily sticks to the themes of Time to Value, Quality and Stability. Another focus point for this release is to provide customers currently on vRA 6.x an upgrade path to all the benefits of the 7.x platform.

vRealize Automation 7.1

I’ll be posting some details around a few of the new capabilities in the next several weeks, but for now here’s a summary list of what vRA 7.1 delivers…

Time To Value

  • Streamlined deployment and prereq installation process
  • Silent installer leveraging new vra-command CLI tool
  • Install management agents, prereqs, and core for VA and IaaS nodes
  • Use wizard-generated unattended properties file for subsequent silent installations
  • Leverages new VA public API (https://<vrava_ip>:5480/config/):

    vra7-176

  • UI-based (VAMI) Migration wizard
  • Migrate from vRealize Automation 6.2.x environment to a new vRealize Automation 7.1 instance
  • Complete DB migration (vPostgres and SQL)
  • Migrate IDVA/SSO Directories to vIDM
  • Preserves the source 6.2.x environment
  • Supports migrating from 6.2.x Simple to 7.1 HA/Distributed (as well as HA to HA):

    vra7-226

  • vSphere Endpoint Improvements
  • Data collection performance increased by ~60%
  • Support for vSphere infrastructure changes (e.g. modifying clusters, vms, networks, storage)
  • Support for provisioning Thick-Eager-Zero vmdk’s via custom property: VirtualMachine.Admin.EagerZero
  • Support for vCPU cores via custom property:  VirtualMachine.Core.Count
  • OOTB Infoblox Integration
  • Integrated with Network Profiles
  • Complete install in > 1hr (vs. 1 week!)
  • Several Additional OOTB (hosted) YAML Blueprints for popular apps

App-Centric Infrastructure

  • Support for manual scale in and scale out of an existing deployments
  • Scale-out applications (e.g. web tier) that need additional resources:

    vra7-487

  • Automatically update NSX load-balancing policy (existing)
  • New command line interface for elasticity

Lifecycle Extensibility Enhancements

  • Integration with Active Directory – create policies to automatically add (lin/win) provisioned machines to AD OU’s per Business Group:

    vra7-578vra7-580

  • Policy to remove AD objects once machines are decommissioned
  • Supports multiple AD domains
  • Trigger lifecycle events for Reconfigure states in Event Broker subscriptions
  • Custom property dictionary controls for external PowerShell and DB queries
  • Support for key/value pairs
  • Support for RegEx input in text fields

Additional Enhancements

  • Configurable Message Board Portlet for displaying external URL content (https) or static text:vra7-172
  • Additional filter options on Items page of the vRealize Automation console (e.g. IP Address):

    vra7-227

  • Search and Filter the Items list by Owner
  • Customizable “All Services” icon (no more generic lego block!!)

This release also ships with the updated vRealize Orchestrator 7.1, which includes several new features on it’s own. vRO 7.1 is embedded with vRA 7.1 and also available as a separate download. I’ll post something separate on that (or link to it) when I get a chance.

Get downloading and deploying…and feel free to share your feedback here.

 

+++++
virtualjad

Categories: Automation, VMware, vRA9 Comments

9 Comments

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  2. Hi ,

    We are in testing phase of upgrade to 7.1. While running vRPT test, I am getting error ” IaaS repository has custom extensibility assembly(ies) installed: Renci.SshNet.dll, DynamicOps.Cdk.Activities.dll expected [0] but found [2] “. Unable to clear the first test. Tried several ways to rectify this issue but no luck.

    Has someone experienced same issue. Yes , Please help me with solution.

    Thanks

  3. “Policy to remove AD objects once machines are decommissioned”

    is it something out of the box in 7.1 or do we need to build vRO Workflow?

  4. Hi Jad, have you tested the silent install using the vra-ha-config.sh script? i am getting alot of errors for running the prerequisite checker with –applyfixes set to True in ha.properties.
    I am actually get the same errors in the installation wizard for 7.1 and it fails to fix the IaaS servers with the prerequisites.

  5. Hello,

    Any specific patch need to be run to Upgrade from vRA 7.0 to 7.1 to have new functionalities. I won’t think we will be doing the DB migration or blueprint migration to move from vRA 7.0 to 7.1. Any specific documentation for sam

  6. Java JDK is required on the SQL server for an upgrade from 7.0.1 to 7.1??? WTF is up with that? 🙁

    “Your primary IaaS Web site, Microsoft SQL database, and Model Manager node must have Java 8,
    update 91, 64 bit, jdk-8u91-windows-x64.exe, installed. After you install Java, you must set the
    environment variable, JAVA_HOME, to the new version on each server node.”

  7. hi, works great, but still nothing to rename a deployment or its description 🙁
    btw we are going to production in 7.1 in one month! 😀

  8. Nice! Are there any other extensions to the EBS, namely events based on the lifecycle of composite blueprint Deployments as distinct from component machines?
    That will help a lot esp. if the payload contains a handle to the Deployment object fro updating properties etc …. :o)

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