Using vRA Terraform Service in air-gapped environment

By | 20. July 2021

Since vRealize Automation 8.2 the product includes blueprints that can leverage Terraform services. The implementation leverages a Kubernetes cluster where it creates a temporary pod which loads some data from the internet. For some customers it’s mandatory to have no internet connection in the datacenter. Hence a solution is required that can run in a… Read More »

Set Deployment Name to VM Name

By | 7. July 2021

The most common use case implemented with vRealize Automation is classic Infrastructure-as-a-Service for VMs. vRealize Automation has the concept of a Deployment that can contain multiple objects incl. network, security and multiple VMs. Although this is the target architecture most of our customers are planning to reach, for many of them their first use case… Read More »

Dynamic Network Selection in request form with vRealize Automation 8 (part 2)

By | 21. May 2021

In one of my previous blogs, I explained how a network selection on blueprint request can be implemented: https://www.vrealize.it/2020/06/25/vrealize-automation-network-selection-in-request-form/ As always there’s multiple ways to achieve goals. The above-mentioned blog is using custom properties to realize the network selection. This has the general advantage that the process could be used for other selections as well… Read More »

NSX-T – NCP Integration with Openshift 4.6 – The Easy Way

By | 24. March 2021

Introduction If you have been following the blog posts on this site, we implemented NSX-T with Openshift 4.4 with NCP’s support for Openshift operators (see https://www.vrealize.it/2020/09/29/nsx-t-ncp-integration-with-openshift-4-4-the-easy-way). In the meantime, NCP 3.1.1 was released, which supports Openshift 4.6. Since 4.6 involves a new ignition format version, I took that opportunity to refresh this blog, to add… Read More »

Installing Antrea Container Networking and AVI Kubernets Operator (AKO) for Ingress

By | 22. January 2021

Update: January 2021 update with current versions (Antrea v0.12.0 AKO 1.13 / Controller 20.1.3) This post shows how to integrate Antrea Container Networking with NSX Advanced Load Balancer (NSX ALB) using AVI Kubernetes Operator (AKO) This example shows integration of a single K8S cluster with NSX ALB. If you plan to integrate more than one… Read More »

Self-Service user onboarding in vRealize Automation

By | 17. December 2020

vRealize Automation 8/Cloud provides a comprehensive platform to offer service as part of a catalog experience. Users that have been assigned to projects and catalog items can select from the services available and request those accordingly. If new users want to get access to the platform typically an admin user must grant them permissions to… Read More »

Configuring VMware NSX Cloud for consistent On-Premises and AWS Public Cloud Microsegmentation

By | 16. December 2020

This post is intended to show a very basic setup of VMware NSX Cloud to demonstrate the capability to enforce consistent microsegmentation policy for hybrid cloud environments. I will describe the setup of NSX Cloud and the operation of the Native Cloud Enforced Mode which relies on firewall functions delivered natively by AWS (or Azure).… Read More »

Integration of vRealize Automation with Keycloak authentication

By | 13. November 2020

Beforehand I would like to express my thanks to Sascha Warno for his help in configuring the Keycloak integration. vRealize Automation 8 is leveraging VMware Identity Manager for authentication of users. While in most environments Identity Manager is integrated with LDAP directory services like Microsoft Active Directory, it supports a wide variety of other identity… Read More »

Push Blueprints to GIT Repo

By | 16. October 2020

Beforehand I would like to express my thanks to Ismail Yilmaz and Christian Liebner for their help in developing modules and verification of the solution. vRealize Automation 8.x and vRealize Automation Cloud do have integration with gitlab and github for source code management. As of today, this is only a one-way process to pull blueprints from the SCM system into vRA –… Read More »

NSX-T – NCP Integration with Openshift 4.4 – The Easy Way

By | 29. September 2020

Introduction In my previous post, we implemented NSX-T with Openshift 4 based without NCP’s support for Openshift operators (see https://www.vrealize.it/2020/07/15/nsx-t-ncp-integration-with-openshift-4-3-the-hard-way/). In the meantime, NCP 3.0.2 was released, which is implemented using an Openshift operator. The operator is also published on the Redhat Openshift Operator Hub (https://catalog.redhat.com/software/operators/detail/5ef0f362701a9cb8c147cf4b). That makes the installation way more simple, as you… Read More »

Hear breaking news from Pat Gelsinger and…

By | 15. September 2020

In my career I’ve seen boring & uninspiring general sessions. Pat & Sanjay always were the opposite for me. Enjoy virtual #vmworld on your couch, stream it on your 65”+TV and enjoy it with microwave popcorn. #carbonblack #lastline #nsx #vmworldsecemea Hear breaking news from Pat Gelsinger and… Join us online for VMworld 2020. Learn about… Read More »

NSX-T – NCP Integration with Openshift 4.3 – The Hard Way

By | 15. July 2020

Introduction Today, we’ll take a look at how to implement NSX-T’s container integration with Redhat Openshift 4.3.Before we begin, let me quickly explain why this blog post is called “The Hard Way”. Today with NSX-T 3.0 and NCP 3.0.1, support for Redhat Openshift can be provided by configuring the corresponding network config files during Openshift’s… Read More »

Dynamic Network Selection in request form with vRealize Automation 8

By | 25. June 2020

Special thanks go to Martin Petkov for his help on API questions. Self-Service offerings typically bring up the question: Who’s the consumer for the services offered? While in many cases this might be some type of end-users who don’t care much where the service is running there’s also a lot of use cases where skilled… Read More »

Troubleshooting DNS on Kubernetes with NSX-T

By | 17. June 2020

After integrating NSX-T with K8S I sometimes get issues with coredns not working. Common root cause: K8S internal DNS infrastructure needs non-NAT’ed network access from container PODs to K8S Nodes and vice versa. As NSX-T NCP default behaviour is to NAT your K8S Namespaces this can – depending on you overall architecture – cause connection… Read More »