Whats New In VRA 7.5

Only few weeks ago VMware released its newest version of the vRealize suite and with it came many long-waited features.

I have been working with vRealize Automation since version 6.2 and must say that this is in my opinion the most significant improvement I have seen in the product yet.

The new UI, which is based on the Clarity UI (HTML5) is a huge improvement. The ease of access to your provisioned items and the fresh look of the portal make it much more user friendly.

Another great addition that many people have been requesting for a long time is the ability to resubmit a request that failed. Requiring the end user to refill the form can be a tedious act that was not user friendly. Finally, this has been implemented.

One more great addition is that if you are entitled to a catalog item from multiple Business Groups you will still only see the catalog item once. When you request the catalog item a popup emerges that allows you to choose the Business Group you want to request this under.

The global search option that has been added is amazing. You can now search for any string and it will find items, menu options, blueprints etc. and allows the end user or administrator to navigate the portal in a much more fluid and comfortable manner.

   

The Items and Requests tabs have been removed and instead a new tab titled Deployments has been created. I was very impressed by its fluidity. Now when you request a deployment you are transferred directly to the deployments page where you see your deployments progress and how far through the deployment phase it is. Additionally, in the case it fails, the error message replaces the progress bar and that is a great improvement to the multiple clicks that were needed to locate the error in previous versions.

They have also added the ability to filter deployments and catalog items based on many different parameters which is a huge improvement.

Another great addition is the history tab on all provisioned deployments. This shows you  the entire history of the deployment, from the provisioning to all the Day-2 actions that have been run on it.

VMware have also improved the integration with vROPS in a very positive direction.

With the new vROPS integration you can now view, from within VRA, runtime statistics from vROPS on the managed Virtual Machines and Deployments regarding CPU, RAM, IOPS and Networking.

Another great new feature is the NSX-T and PKS integrations into VRA. Whilst neither of these features is perfect it is a great starting point.

They have also improved the Event Subscriptions allowing you to choose if you want a Blocking Subscription in any phase to fail the deployment if the VRO Workflow fails.

A lot of previous issues that were painful for VRA administrators and users were fixed.

The Azure plugin is now faster and doesn’t time out on the Day-2 actions as it did in past releases.

The Upgrade and patching process has also been greatly improved from the means of audit logging and one of the greatest additions is that you no longer need to play with disabling Load Balancers when upgrading.

Another huge improvement that was made is the HTML5 VRO Monitoring Client.

This was added in 7.4, but 7.5 allows running workflows via the Client as well. This is a huge benefit for operational teams to be able to run these workflows without the need to build XaaS Blueprints for everything and to prevent the need for everyone to download and access the VRO Java Client.

VMware has also partnered with SovLabs in order to add Ansible Tower integration for configuration management in a similar manner to the Puppet integration which already exists.

VMware has also added the ability to add vRealize Business Parameters into Custom Forms which is a huge improvement.

Another improvement is the ability to easily rename a deployment or its description. Frequently, users would request the ability to easily update a deployment with details regarding the purpose of what those systems contained. In 7.5 you simply highlight the name and select the pencil icon to edit and save the changes.

Another great option that has been improved is the ability to propagate properties from a blueprint when applied to all deployments that have been deployed from that same blueprint. This includes the ability to change lease and archive times.

In general, this is an amazing release. With all the new features that have been implemented and the many bugs that have been fixed this seems to be a sign that VMware is listening to its customers and is on the right track regarding the vRealize Suite.

While this is about the new VRA release I must also say that the new vROPS is quite impressive as well. Especially the ability to share a dashboard via link or embed a dashboard on another website and allow users who are not authorized to access the vROPS the ability the view a dashboard of your choosing.