A vRealize Automation Cloud release full of “Easter Eggs” – VMware Cloud Community

03.21 vRealize Automation Cloud Launch Update

We wish you a very featureful Easter!

We kept our 03.21 (March) launch under the covers until the very end of the month; but it was worth it: It’s full of Easter Eggs!

vRealize Orchestrator plugin for vRealize Automation Cloud

Should I use vRealize Orchestrator or Automation? That’s such a standard vRealize user question but it’s really a chocolate bunny-and-chocolate egg problem¹. Fear no more! With this new plugin we let you use vRO to execute workflows for vRA constructs and benefit from the readily available content that it comes with. Read more in this how-to blog.

Enriched Support for Microsoft Azure

While vRealize enables self-service and easy consumption for VMware Clouds, we also cater to those of you who choose native hyperscaler solutions. This month, we extended our support for Azure, bringing more native resources in VMware Cloud Templates. Specifically, you can now create Azure-specific cloud templates with Azure Availability Sets, Azure Image Gallery and Azure Disk Encryption Sets. That’s in addition to Azure services we are already supporting including IaaS objects, Resource Groups, Traffic, Storage, SQL, Search, Redis, Key, Function, DNS and App. Learn details about those enhancements in this technical blog.

CLI for VMware Code Stream

Frankly, it was about time. Thanks to @sammcgeown, VMware Code Stream, the vRA Cloud CI/CD pipeline that is tailored for infrastructure use cases, got its own Command Line Interface (CLI). This means that, in addition to the intuitive GUI and REST APIs, vRA Cloud users and coders can now interact with Code Stream APIs in a very developer-friendly way. Check out the blog, the fling and the repo.

Secret Properties

We know how important your secrets are. Keep them safe, with secure properties encrypted in the database. Secret variables can be included as part of VMware Cloud Templates or our Action Based Extensibility (ABX) engine. Moreover, with the March launch, vRealize Automation Cloud added a single store for all your secrets across cloud templates and workflows.

Features everywhere!

In the festive spirit, we included several additional features this month. Enhancements around the workload onboarding workflows to add flexibility, storage automation functionality (e.g., support for disks that are part of VM image template), support for GCP Sole Tenancy (dedicated host), Ansible and Puppet integration enhancements, resource-level policy criteria and the list of Easter Eggs goes on! Start a trial and discover them yourself or just read the March release notes for a full download – easier but not as fun.

Overcome fear and uncertainty – Exploit DevOps for Infrastructure

Are you interested in DevOps? If so, check out the recent webinar we delivered in collaboration with Forrester’s DevOps lead analyst Charles Betz. I am biased, as I was co-presenting, but it was honestly some of the most insightful and practical perspective on the topic, based on primary research. We recently published a germane Forrester Opportunity Snapshot, commissioned by VMware, that we refer to in the webinar and you may want to take a look at.

And if you want to dive deeper into DevOps, especially around infrastructure use cases, we have no shortage of content. @mandystor keeps posting her cloud insights in VMware’s Cloud community page and she has a few new pieces around GitOps, DevOps profiles and Everything as Code you will certainly find interesting.

Coming up and getting started

April is full of surprises so keep an eye open! Who knows? We might have some more in the box (tip: check back our website closer to the end of April).

Our free 45-day trial for vRealize Automation Cloud is still the best way to explore our solution yourself or with a little help from our experts.

Until next month!

1. Shoutout to @DormainDrewitz for the pun