VMware vRealize Suite

VMware vRealize Suite is a solution that combines VMware's cloud automation, operational support, and cloud management capabilities under the new VMware vRealize brand. VMware vRealize Suite enables customers to manage and deliver resources on the scale they need - for computing, storage, network, and application services in hybrid cloud environments. The platform's end-to-end multi-cloud software-defined data center management capabilities help customers in the three most typical use cases that have been brought out with thousands of customers. It's smart operation, IT and IT automation for DevOps.

2022: vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.8

On May 16, 2022, it became known that VMware updated its solution vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to version 8.8, which is part of the vRealize Suite. The solution is designed to deploy installation images, track compliance and bring the cluster to the desired level of updates. It replaced VMware Update Manager (VUM), expanding its capabilities.

Major changes in vRLCM 8.8

Lifecycle Management vRealize Orchestrator

Lifecycle Manager now supports the vRealize Orchestrator automation solution, which is included in the vRealize Automation package (base version), and also exists as a separate product (full-featured version for the production environment).

You can now add an existing vRealize Orchestrator server, deploy the newly created vRealize Automation server, or create a separate instance vRO as part of the installation of the vRA infrastructure:

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vRealize Orchestrator cannot be installed without vRealize Automation services in the infrastructure. Importing an existing instance looks simple enough:

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A little more steps will be required for the actual installation of the vRO, but most of the parameters will already be completed by the installation wizard:

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Once imported, the vRealize Orchestrator icon appears on the virtual environment card:

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Since vRO is associated with the installed vRA, the Day 2 actions for vRO appear as a sub-tab for vRealize Automation:

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Day 2 lifecycle management actions are available from the menu in the upper right corner:

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Optimizing vRealize Automation

Previously, when removing the vRealize Automation infrastructure snapper, it took about 10 minutes to properly shut down all systems before upgrading the cluster. Now this time has been reduced as part of optimizing workflows when creating an online snapper and rolling back to it. Before the upgrade, the vRLCM checks the normal operation of the Automation vRealize.

The second change to the Automation Cloud vRealize is support for Cloud Extensibility Proxy deployment. Previously, there was a proxy card, but it was only available for standard proxies. It will now be deployed as an extensibility service when the next proxy is created. The picture below shows the difference from the previous version:

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VMware Identity Manager Clusters

When you deploy or scale a three-node VMware Identity Manager cluster, you can now deploy the created nodes to different datacenters and clusters. This enables high availability across clusters and sites.

In previous releases, advanced settings did not allow changing infrastructure options. Now you can change all settings fields for each node:

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All hosts must use the same network within vCenter Servers.

Optimized Notation

Now there are notifications for the status of licenses and their obsolescence:

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This allows you to take care of current licenses and certificates in advance and take appropriate action in Lifecycle Operations before licenses/certificates become obsolete.

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Another change is an additional validation step when adding a webhook URL for Slack and Teams to immediately verify that the parameters are correct (a test message is sent).

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VMware Cloud Foundation Optimization

This release introduced automatic installation of VMware Identity Manager and SDDC Health packages management as part of vRealize Operations deployment. These are the right folders to monitor the VMware Cloud Foundation environment that were previously installed manually.

Starting with VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4 and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.6.2, the deployment of vRealize family products is controlled by vRLCM. This allows users to upgrade products as soon as their next versions are released, without having to wait until the list of supported VMware Cloud Foundation BOM systems is updated.

Users can now upgrade vRealize products in VMware Cloud Foundation support mode, reducing the upgrade time. This is supported for vRealize products as of version 8.1.

Also in this mode, the compatibility of vCenter Server, ESXi and NSX components with any type of upgrades will be verified. This ensures that the user always receives a supported configuration.

Another change is the processing of changes. password vCenter SDDC Manager can now regularly change vCenter Server passwords that are automatically updated storage in the Realize Suite Lifecycle Manager.

Content Management Optimization

This release fixed an error when content was not removed from the source (for example, GitHub) during an update.^[1]

2021: vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.6

On October 25, 2021, VMware announced the release of an updated version of vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.6, which was included in the updated vRealize Suite.

According to the company, Lifecycle Manager can be used to apply installation images, track compliance and bring the cluster to the desired level of updates. It replaced VMware Update Manager (VUM), expanding its capabilities.

VCF users can now integrate SDDC Manager and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. In this case, often administrators deploy vRSLCM outside the VCF loop or move it there for test or other isolated environments, so it is possible to turn this mode on and off.

In the case of VCF and vRSLCM integration, SDDC Manager is used to provide binary distributions for vRSLCM that are downloaded from MyVMware. After that, vRSLCM is already responsible for patches and updates in the VCF Aware environment, adhering to the list of components (bill of materials, BOM) of the VCF inventory.

The second update is the ability to enable/disable Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) settings in one click. For a VCF environment, CEIP can be configured for Day-2 activities instead of individual products, which speeds deployment.

The product now has an updated Topology View.

Topology View Updated

Here you can view information about products and components, as well as their relationships. When you click on one of the products, you can see all its components and their links to other objects. This allows the administrator to get a visual picture of his infrastructure with the ability to search all objects.

Also, Auto Discovery allows vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to find all products of the vRealize line in the user's environment and simply import them.

FQDN, IP address and other necessary information is collected automatically, you only need to provide passwords for administrative and root accounts, you will do everything else vRSLCM - you will receive details about the products and make another environment. You can also add these products to an existing environment.

Auto Discovery

The Lifecycle Operations Settings tab has two settings, Outbound Notifications and SMTP Settings. Using Outbound Notifications, the user can create triggers for product adaptations, license status, certificate problems, and overall environment status. These notifications can be sent to Microsoft Teams, Slack, or by e-mail (in this case, of course, you need to configure SMTP).

Once a user receives URL webhooks, they must be added to the vRSLCM to send notifications. To avoid throwing notifications to administrators, they are grouped within products. It is also possible to receive notifications about all events from the moment they were last sent, which are grouped into one digest.

Ability to receive notification of all events

The vRSLCM console now has the vRealize Cloud service, which provides services for VMware cloud products as part of the vRealize Cloud Universal subscription and Cloud Proxy lifecycle.

To activate vRealize Cloud products, you must deploy Cloud Proxy in OVA format on the vCenter server. Now this is what the user can do vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, deploying Cloud Proxy for the products vRealize Automation Cloud, vRealize Log Insight Cloud and vRealize Network Insight Cloud.

Day-2 actions are also available, including removing Cloud Proxy and changing site passwords. There are also subscription activation functions within the Cloud Universal vRealize.

vRealize Cloud Universal

In the category of other updates, there are a few small points:

• vRealize Operations Cloud Proxies can now be added as product components, or you can add Collector Groups, where you can assign Remote Collectors and Cloud Proxy to groups, and move them.
• The NTP settings are now Day-2 actions, so you can update them at any time.
• You can configure your root password for all sites.
• Optimized snipshot control-You can, for example, automatically remove a snipshot after a query is executed. Or you can roll back to the snapshot if the upgrade request has not passed. All snapshots are visible in the same way as in the client vSphere Client.
• Content management updates - Automatically update the status of the pipeline and set timeouts.
• Updated vRealize Orchestrator HTTP-REST operations to work with workflow version history.
• Delete Day-2 log bundle to free up disk space.

2017

LifeCycle Manager as part of vRealize Suite

Main article: VMware vRealize LifeCycle Manager (vRSLCM)

On September 14, 2017 the VMware company presented the vRealize LifeCycle Manager technology intended for management of life cycle of solutions of this product line as a part of vRealize Suite.

Upgraded vRealize Suite 2017

On September 13, 2017, VMware introduced an upgraded cloud management platform. Product changes will enable customers to implement, operate, and manage IT infrastructure and application services in a multi-cloud.

VMware vRealize Suite 2017 includes the releases of vRealize Operations, vRealize Automation, vRealize Business for Cloud and vRealize Log Insight.

VMware vRealize Suite 2017 will provide a comprehensive cloud management platform that can work with hybrid environments from private and public clouds. This solution will accelerate the delivery of IT services by automating and enforcing predefined policies. Software can be used in heterogeneous environments that are a combination of traditional and native cloud applications running on virtual machines and containers in a software-defined data center (SDDC) or multi-cloud environment.

According to the developers, this technology will support customers in three use cases:

• intelligent operation,
• IT Automation
• development clouds.

Among the features of the package:

• Simplification of Service (Day 0, Day 1, Day 2) - With VMware vRealize Suite 2017, day-to-day administration and operation of software will become much easier - with built-in and automated maintenance tools for the installation and configuration stages.
• vRealize Operations 6.6 - vRealize Operations 6.6 offers the ability to host workloads. They allow you to fully automate load distribution across compute clusters and data warehouses according to your business needs. The solution includes a predictive distributed resource scheduler (pDRS) and native VMware vSAN management and monitoring capabilities for vSAN-based hyperconvergent infrastructures (HCIs).
• vRealize Automation 7.3 - vRealize Automation 7.3 offers support for Admiral 1.1, a scalable portal for managing containers, instances of virtual containers created by VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, containers, and Docker volumes. These capabilities allow users to create data volumes and attach them to containers. The component improves VMware NSX support through comprehensive and detailed installation management and new security features such as load allocation, network address translation, and security groups.
• vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 - vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 is now available in vRealize Operations 6.6 as a tab. Analytical assessments that combine operational and business metrics will track how efficient capacity utilization increases cost efficiency. In addition, vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 provides complete information about the costs of AWS and Microsoft Azure, a private cloud on VMware.
• vRealize Log Insight 4.5 - vRealize Log Insight 4.5 supports full integration with vRealize Operations, providing troubleshooting analysis with parallel display of relevant metrics and records.

VMware vRealize Suite 2017 is expected to go on sale at the end of November 2017. The package is presented in three editions - Standard, Advanced and Enterprise.

May update

VMware in May 2017 introduced important updates to the VMware vRealize cloud management platform that improve software-defined data center (SDDC) and cloud operations and accelerate service delivery for applications and infrastructure in the hybrid cloud. New releases of VMware vRealize Operations 6.6, VMware vRealize Automation 7.3, vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3, vRealize Log Insight 4.5, and vRealize Network Insight 3.4 combine to provide smart operations and IT automation for enterprise customers to simplify VMware cloud management. In addition, VMware provides improved support for containers and configuration management solutions for easier migration of applications from a test development environment to an industrial environment.

Smart operations enable companies to plan, scale, and manage SDDC and multi-cloud systems with confidence, managing operations at all levels, from applications to infrastructure. New vRealize features designed for this use case include:

• Automated Proactive Load Placement: vRealize Operations 6.6 significantly expands the amount of data on which load placement decisions are made, allowing you to fully automate the distribution of loads across clusters and data warehouses based on business tasks, as well as set a schedule for redistribution in a convenient maintenance window. This release also includes the Resource Allocation Predictive Scheduler (pDRS), which combines vRealize Operations analytical data with VMware vSphere DRS data, which will identify violations and take action before resource shortages occur.
• VMware Operations Management vSAN: vRealize Operations 6.6 has built-in vSAN management and monitoring tools, so you no longer need to download and install integration packages separately. Solution capabilities include capacity and remaining time mapping, data deduplication, compression savings, and resource recovery capabilities for vSAN-based hyperconvergent infrastructure (HCI) solutions. The new release also provides centralized management of distributed and stretched cluster environments vSAN with advanced troubleshooting capabilities, proactive warning of possible errors, and transparency in all phases, from virtual machine to disk.
• Merge Operations and Business Analytics - In a new release, vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 will appear as a tab in the vRealize Operations 6.6 interface. Thanks to new analytical data combining operational and business metrics, it will be possible to see how the competent use of capacity increases cost efficiency. The new vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 solution provides complete information about the costs of AWS and Microsoft Azure, as well as a private cloud on the VMware platform.
• Cross-Cloud Security and Network Mode Management - vRealize Network Insight 3.4 adds support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) networks and security services, enabling users to plan for protection of their virtual private cloud with AWS Virtual Private Cloud and tagging. Customers can add AWS EC2 virtual machines to the list of user-defined applications to microsegment and fix network traffic problems in AWS.

• VMware NSX Operations: vRealize Automation 7.3 adds advanced NSX support, including configuring additional NSX controls for load balancing, network, and Day 1 and Day 2 security operations.
• The automated proactive placement of workloads: in vRealize Automation 7.3 the function of making decisions on placement of the requested virtual machines on the most suitable resources is considerably improved. Users can now create a hosting policy in vRealize Operations and submit it to the vRealizeAutomation.

• Improved container management: vRealize Automation 7.3 includes Admiral 1.1, a highly scalable and non-resource-intensive container management portal. Admiral 1.1 support enables users to manage virtual container hosts created by VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, as well as Docker hosts. The new release also introduced support for Docker volumes so that users can create volumes and attach them to containers.
• Leveraging Configuration Management Solutions: vRealize Automation 7.3 introduces a new architecture that allows you to use configuration management tools as objects for your created deployment templates. Puppet is the leading ecosystem partner. Customers can now seamlessly implement, configure, and manage industrial operating systems, intermediate services, and applications using vRealize Automation planning, service orchestration, and management workflows, along with the capabilities of existing configuration management tools.
• Possibility of reuse of templates thanks to parametrization: in vRealize Automation 7.3 use of templates by means of parametrization application (sets of settings of performance) is considerably increased convenience that reduces total cost of ownership for customers. Service developers will be able to create fixed sizes (n, "small," "medium," "large") of specific resources in projects and easily adapt services to their individual needs using the parameters of the "dimensions" installation.
• Integration with the Microsoft Azure public cloud: vRealize Automation 7.3 has improved support for Microsoft Azure - it is possible to deploy and manage applications, intermediate services.

As the fullest and functional hybrid cloud architecture, VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture™ supports models of consecutive expansion, security policy, visibility and regulation of work of all applications started locally and outside the organization irrespective of used for this cloud, the technical platform or a hypervisor. At the heart of VMware's cross-cloud architecture, use features for private and hybrid clouds that enable customers to innovate simultaneously across multiple clouds. It is provided thanks to technologies VMware Cloud Foundation™, VMware Cross-Cloud Services™ and the platform of management of VMware vRealize cloud.

2016: vRealize Suite 7 Release

On February 10, 2016, VMware released the seventh version of vRealize Suite. Most components have been updated vRealize^[2].

vRealize Suite 7 contains versions of its core components, including vRealize Operations and Log Insight, Automation 7, and Business for Cloud 7.

vRealize Suite 7 functionality chart according to revisions (2016)

vRealize Developers plan to address all the challenges of managing cloud operations in a single enterprise system. The suite is said to be capable of managing computing, network and application services, storage services in hybrid cloud environments, and supports intelligent operations initiatives, infrastructure upgrades, and DevOps methodology. As VMware assures, it is able to simultaneously support the development and testing environment, a productive environment. This is not a simple task for any type of cloud: hybrid, private or public.

The company has formulated three general scenarios for the use of the complex:

• Intelligent Operations Management
  • IT professionals can proactively monitor the status and performance of IT services and manage the resources they need to operate in heterogeneous and hybrid cloud environments to improve service performance and availability.

• Automated delivery of infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
  • Enables IT professionals to automate the provision and ongoing management of their IT infrastructure to reduce response time to IT resource requests. This reduction is achieved through self-service access to these resources for IT and business users.

• Implementation of the principles of DevOps
  • IT professionals can create a cloud for development teams with a full application stack, provide developers with access to the resources they need using the API or GUI, and provide hybrid cloud resources. You can also extend the capabilities of the solution by adding VMware vRealize Code Stream functionality to accelerate application delivery.

Among the emerging features, the most important are presented in vRealize Automation 7, since this product implements a unified service creation functionality that automates the complex procedures for providing integrated multilevel applications using application-oriented networks and ensuring security in the cloud.

vRealize Suite will be offered in the Standard edition (Advanced and Enterprise are available). It has the necessary functionality to manage intelligent infrastructure operations and provides analytic information for managing the state and performance of IT services, allocated IT resources for them, covering all infrastructure domains in a heterogeneous hybrid cloud.

All VMware vRealize Suite editions are designed for hybrid cloud systems.

2014: VMware vRealize Suite 6

On August 25, 2014, at VMworld 2014, VMware introduced VMware vRealize Suite, the full range of solutions for managing software-defined data center and cloud infrastructure services (IaaS).

Built specifically for heterogeneous environments and hybrid clouds, the full-scale management platform helps professionals build infrastructure and applications at the speed required by business and the level of control required by IT.

VMware vRealize Suite will be available in Q3 2014 year.

Helping IT companies meet multiple challenges, VMware introduced vRealize Suite, a cloud-based management platform with a common service approach that provides unified management and rapid return on investment.

VMware vRealize Suite provides uniform management of VMware vRealize Suite combines the capabilities of cloud automation, cloud processes, and business management - all in one offering. While maintaining uniformity of management, the system offers a complete and integrated set of management tools for automating the release and operational management of traditional and new cloud applications located in public and private clouds, several hypervisors and physical infrastructure. The overall service delivery model simplifies typical tasks, reduces the need for switching between different controls, and provides administrators with a functional environment to work with.

Notes