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Foundations and
Concepts
04 December 2017
vRealize Automation 7.3

Foundations and Concepts

You can find the most up-to-date technical documentation on the VMware website at:
https://docs.vmware.com/
If you have comments about this documentation, submit your feedback to
docfeedback@vmware.com

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Copyright © 2008–2017 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright and trademark information.
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Contents
Foundations and Concepts

1 Updated Information 6
2 Foundations and Concepts 7
Using Scenarios

Using the Goal Navigator

Introducing vRealize Automation

Providing On-Demand Services to Users Overview
vRealize Business for Cloud Overview
Tenancy and User Roles
Tenancy Overview

User Roles Overview
Service Catalog

Requesting and Managing Items in the Catalog
Creating and Publishing Catalog Items
Services for the Service Catalog
Catalog Items
Actions

Entitlements

Approval Policies

Infrastructure as a Service

Configuring Infrastructure Fabric

Infrastructure Source Endpoints

Compute Resources
Data Collection
Fabric Groups

34
35

Business Groups

Machine Prefixes

Resource Reservations

Configuring Reservation Policies
Machine Blueprints

Machine Leases and Reclamation

Scaling and Reconfiguring Deployments
XaaS Blueprints and Resource Actions
Custom Resources
Resource Mappings

Creating XaaS Blueprints and Actions

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42
43

Foundations and Concepts

XaaS Blueprints

Resource Actions
Common Components
Notifications
Branding

43
43

Life Cycle Extensibility

vRealize Automation Extensibility Options

Leveraging Existing and Future Infrastructure
Configuring Business-Relevant Services

Extending vRealize Automation with Event-Based Workflows
Integrating with Third-Party Management Systems

Adding New IT Services and Creating New Actions

Calling vRealize Automation Services from External Applications
Distributed Execution

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Foundations and Concepts
VMware vRealize ™ Automation provides a secure portal where authorized administrators, developers, or
business users can request new IT services. In addition, they can manage specific cloud and IT
resources that enable IT organizations to deliver services that can be configured to their lines of business
in a self-service catalog.
This documentation describes the features and capabilities of vRealize Automation. It includes
information about the following subjects:
n

vRealize Automation components

Common service catalog

Infrastructure as a Service

XaaS

Software

For information about cost management for VMware vRealize ™ Automation, see the documentation for
VMware vRealize ™ Business ™ for Cloud.
Note Not all features and capabilities of vRealize Automation are available in all editions. For a
comparison of feature sets in each edition, see https://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-automation/.

Intended Audience
This information is intended for anyone who needs to familiarize themselves with the features and
capabilities of vRealize Automation.

VMware Technical Publications Glossary
VMware Technical Publications provides a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to you. For
definitions of terms as they are used in VMware technical documentation, go to
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

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Updated Information

This Foundations and Concepts is updated with each release of the product or when necessary.
This table provides the update history of the Foundations and Concepts.
Revision

Description

04 December 2017

Minor updates.

12 September 2017

Updated Scaling and Reconfiguring Deployments.

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Foundations and Concepts

Before you begin working with vRealize Automation, you can familiarize yourself with basic
vRealize Automation concepts.
This section includes the following topics:
n

Using Scenarios

Using the Goal Navigator

Introducing vRealize Automation

Tenancy and User Roles

Service Catalog

Infrastructure as a Service

XaaS Blueprints and Resource Actions

Common Components

Life Cycle Extensibility

Using Scenarios
You can use scenarios to build working samples of vRealize Automation functionality that you can learn
from or customize to suit your needs.
Scenarios walk you through the most common and simplified workflow to complete a vRealize Automation
task. They do not contain options or choices, and serve as introductory examples to both basic and
advanced vRealize Automation functionality.
For example, you can use Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation for the Rainpole Scenario to
install a working proof of concept vRealize Automation deployment into your existing vSphere
environment.

Using the Goal Navigator
The goal navigator guides you through high-level goals that you might want to accomplish in
vRealize Automation.
The goals you can achieve depend on your role. To complete each goal, you must complete a sequence
of steps that are presented on separate pages in the vRealize Automation console.

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Foundations and Concepts

The goal navigator can answer the following questions:
n

Where do I start?

What are all the steps I need to complete to achieve a goal?

What are the prerequisites for completing a particular task?

Why do I need to do this step and how does this step help me achieve my goal?

The goal navigator is hidden by default. You can expand the goal navigator by clicking the icon on the left
side of the screen.
After you select a goal, you navigate between the pages needed to accomplish the goal by clicking each
step. The goal navigator does not validate that you completed a step, or force you to complete steps in a
particular order. The steps are listed in the recommended sequence. You can return to each goal as many
times as needed.
For each step, the goal navigator provides a description of the task you need to perform on the
corresponding page. The goal navigator does not provide detailed information such as how to complete
the forms on a page. You can hide the page information or move it to a more convenient position on the
page. If you hide the page information, you can display it again by clicking the information icon on the
goal navigator panel.

Introducing vRealize Automation
IT organizations can use VMware vRealize ™ Automation to deliver services to their lines of business.
vRealize Automation provides a secure portal where authorized administrators, developers, or business
users can request new IT services and manage specific cloud and IT resources, while ensuring
compliance with business policies. Requests for IT services, including infrastructure, applications,
desktops, and many others, are processed through a common service catalog to provide a consistent
user experience.
To improve cost control, you can integrate vRealize Business for Cloud with your vRealize Automation
instance to expose the month-to-date expense of cloud and virtual machine resources, and help you
better manage capacity, price, and efficiency.
Note Beginning with version 7.3, vRealize Automation supports only vRealize Business for Cloud
version 7.3 and later.

Providing On-Demand Services to Users Overview
You can use the IaaS, Software, and XaaS features of vRealize Automation to model custom on-demand
IT services and deliver them to your users through the vRealize Automation common service catalog.
You use blueprints to define machine deployment settings. Published blueprints become catalog items,
and are the means by which entitled users provision machine deployments. Catalog items can range in
complexity from a single, simple machine with no guest operating system to complex custom application
stacks delivered on multiple machines under an NSX load balancer with networking and security controls.

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Foundations and Concepts

You can create and publish blueprints for a single machine deployment, or a single custom XaaS
resource, but you can also combine machine blueprints and XaaS blueprints with other building blocks to
design elaborate application blueprints that include multiple machines, networking and security, software
with full life cycle support, and custom XaaS functionality. You can also control deployment settings by
using a parameterized blueprint, which allows you to specify pre-configured size and image settings at
request time. Because all published blueprints and blueprint components are reusable, you can create a
library of these components and combine them in new nested blueprints to deliver increasingly complex
on-demand services.
Published blueprints become catalog items that your service catalog administrators can deliver to your
users. The service catalog provides a unified self-service portal for consuming IT services. Service
catalog administrators can manage user access to catalog services, items, and actions by using
entitlements and approvals, and users can browse the catalog to request items they need, track their
requests, and manage their provisioned items.

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Foundations and Concepts

XaaS Overview
With the XaaS, XaaS architects can create XaaS blueprints and resource action, and publish them
as catalog items.

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Foundations and Concepts

Containers Overview
You can use containers to gain access to additional instrumentation for developing and deploying
applications in vRealize Automation.

Infrastructure as a Service Overview
With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), you can rapidly model and provision servers and desktops across
virtual and physical, private and public, or hybrid cloud infrastructures.
Modeling is accomplished by creating a machine blueprint, which is a specification for a machine.
Blueprints are published as catalog items in the common service catalog, and are available for reuse as
components inside of application blueprints. When an entitled user requests a machine based on one of
these blueprints, IaaS provisions the machine.
With IaaS, you can manage the machine life cycle from a user request and administrative approval
through decommissioning and resource reclamation. Built-in configuration and extensibility features also
make IaaS a highly flexible means of customizing machine configurations and integrating machine
provisioning and management with other enterprise-critical systems such as load balancers, configuration
management databases (CMDBs), ticketing systems, IP address management systems, or Domain Name
System (DNS) servers.

Software Components Overview
Software components automate the installation, configuration, and life cycle management of middleware
and application deployments in dynamic cloud environments. Applications can range from simple Web
applications to complex and even packaged applications.
By using a configurable scriptable engine, software architects fully control how middleware and
application deployment components are installed, configured, updated, and uninstalled on machines.
Through the use of Software properties, software architects can require or allow blueprint architects and
end-users to specify configuration elements such as environment variables. For repeated deployments,
these blueprints standardize the structure of the application, including machine blueprints, software
components, dependencies, and configurations, but can allow environment variables and property
binding to be reconfigured if necessary.
To successfully add software components to the design canvas, you must also have business group
member, business group administrator, or tenant administrator role access to the target catalog.

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Foundations and Concepts

Deploying Any Application and Middleware Service
You can deploy Software components on Windows or Linux operating systems on vSphere,
vCloud Director, vCloud Air, and Amazon AWS machines.
n

IaaS architects create reusable machine blueprints based on templates, snapshots, or Amazon
machine images that contain the guest agent and Software bootstrap agent to support Software
components.

Software architects create reusable software components that specify exactly how the software is
installed, configured, updated during deployment scale operations, and uninstalled on machines.

Software architects, IaaS architects, and application architects use a graphical interface to model
application deployment topologies. Architects reconfigure Software properties and bindings as
required by the software architect, and publish application blueprints that combine Software
components and machine blueprints.

Catalog administrators add the published blueprints to a catalog service, and entitle users to request
the catalog item.

Entitled users request the catalog item and provide any configuration values designed to be editable.
vRealize Automation deploys the requested application, provisioning any machine(s), networking and
security components, and Software component(s) defined in the application blueprint.

Entitled users request the scale in or scale out actions to adjust their deployments to changing
workload demands. vRealize Automation installs or uninstalls Software components on machines for
scale, and runs update scripts for dependent Software components.

Standardization in Software
With Software, you can create reusable services using standardized configuration properties to meet
strict requirements for IT compliance. Software includes the following standardized configuration
properties:
n

Model-driven architecture that enables adding IT certified machine blueprints and middleware
services within the application blueprint.

A delegation model for overriding configuration name value pairs between software architect,
application architect, and end user to standardize configuration values for application and middleware
service.

Software Extensibility and Open Architecture
You can download predefined Software components for a variety of middleware services and applications
from the VMware Solution Exchange. Using either the vRealize CloudClient or vRealize Automation
REST API , you can programmatically import predefined Software components into your
vRealize Automation instance.
n

To visit the VMware Solution Exchange, see
https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/category_groups/cloud-management.

For information about vRealize Automation REST API, see Programming Guide and vRealize
Automation API Reference.

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Foundations and Concepts

For information about vRealize CloudClient, see https://developercenter.vmware.com/tool/cloudclient.

XaaS Overview
With the XaaS, XaaS architects can create XaaS blueprints and resource action, and publish them as
catalog items.
With XaaS, you can provide anything as a service using the capabilities of
VMware vRealize ™ Orchestrator ™. For example, you can create a blueprint that allows a user to
request a backup of a database. After completing and submitting a backup request, the user receives a
backup file of the database they specified.
An XaaS architect can create custom resource types mapped to vRealize Orchestrator object types and
define them as items to be provisioned. A XaaS architect can then create blueprints from
vRealize Orchestrator workflows and publish the blueprints as catalog items. The vRealize Orchestrator
workflows can be either predefined or independently developed by workflow developers.
You can also use the XaaS to design additional actions that the consumer can perform on the provisioned
items. These additional actions are connected to vRealize Orchestrator workflows and take the
provisioned item as input to the workflow. To use this function for items provisioned by sources other than
the XaaS, you must create resource mappings to define their resource types in vRealize Orchestrator.
For more information about vRealize Orchestrator and its capabilities, see the vRealize Orchestrator
documentation.

Service Catalog Overview
The service catalog provides a unified self-service portal for consuming IT services. Users can browse the
catalog to request items they need, track their requests, and manage their provisioned items.
Service architects and administrators can define new services and publish them to the common catalog.
When defining a service, the architect can specify the kind of item that can be requested, and what
options are available to the consumer as part of submitting the request.
Group managers or line-of-business administrators can specify business policies such as who is entitled
to request specific catalog items or perform specific actions on provisioned items. They can also apply
configurable approval policies to catalog requests.
Users responsible for managing the catalog, such as tenant administrators and service architects, can
manage the presentation of catalog items to the consumers of IT services, for example by grouping items
into service categories for easier navigation and highlighting new services to consumers on the portal
home page.

Containers Overview
You can use containers to gain access to additional instrumentation for developing and deploying
applications in vRealize Automation.
Containers for vRealize Automation allows vRealize Automation to support containers. You can provision
an application that is built from containers or from a combination of containers and VMs.

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Foundations and Concepts

Container administrators can use Containers to perform the following tasks:
n

Model containerized applications in vRealize Automation blueprints.

Provision container hosts from the vRealize Automation service catalog.

Manage container hosts from within vRealize Automation.

Create and configure hosts.

Set resource quotas for containers.

Work with templates, images, and registries.

Create and edit blueprints in the vRealize Automation service catalog.

Develop multi-container templates.

Container architects can add container components to a vRealize Automation blueprint.
The integrated Containers application uses the Docker Remote API to provision and manage containers,
including retrieving information about container instances. From a deployment perspective, developers
can use Docker Compose to create their application and deploy it through Containers in
vRealize Automation. Because that application is ready to be promoted from development to production,
developers can enhance the application to include dynamic networks or micro-segmentation.
Cloud administrators can manage the container host infrastructure, for example to govern capacity quotas
and approval workflows.
Use the Containers Context-Sensitive Help
When working with Containers for vRealize Automation, you have access to a context-sensitive help
system that dynamically displays content for the task that you are currently performing.
After you open the Containers help system, the page content automatically updates based on your
location in the Containers user interface. You can view the Containers help system in a separate window,
on a second screen, or from a mobile device in parallel with the primary interface.
You can use the Containers help system outside of the trusted network and still receive instant
documentation page updates relative to where your cursor is in the Containers application.
1

Click the Containers tab.

Click Help on the Containers Welcome page, next to the Add a Host button.

You can refresh the web browser to redisplay the Welcome page.

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Foundations and Concepts

vRealize Business for Cloud Overview
With vRealize Business for Cloud, directors of cloud operations can monitor their expenditures and
design more price-efficient cloud services.
vRealize Business for Cloud provides the following benefits:
n

Drives accountability by providing visibility into the price of virtual infrastructure and public cloud
providers and providing daily price and month-to-date expense updates in vRealize Automation.

Promotes efficiencies in the virtual infrastructure by making it possible to compare the prices,
efficiency, and availability of their private cloud with public cloud providers and industry benchmark
data.

Optimizes decisions about placement for virtual workloads and tradeoffs between buying new
hardware and using public cloud providers.

For more information about vRealize Business for Cloud, see the vRealize Business for Cloud
documentation.

Tenancy and User Roles
vRealize Automation supports multiple tenants in the same installation. Users always log in and perform
their tasks in a specific tenant. Some administrator roles can manage configuration that affects multiple
tenants.

Tenancy Overview
A tenant is an organizational unit in a vRealize Automation deployment. A tenant can represent a
business unit in an enterprise or a company that subscribes to cloud services from a service provider.
Each tenant has its own dedicated configuration. Some system-level configuration is shared across
tenants.
Table 2‑1. Tenant Configuration
Configuration Area

Description

Each tenant has a unique URL to the vRealize Automation console.
n

The default tenant URL is in the following format: https://hostname/vcac

The URL for additional tenants is in the following format:
https://hostname/vcac/org/tenantURL

Identity stores

Each tenant requires access to one or more directory services, such as OpenLDAP or
Microsoft Active Directory servers, that are configured to authenticate users. You can
use the same directory service for more than one tenant, but you must configure it
separately for each tenant.

Branding

A tenant administrator can configure the branding of the vRealize Automation console
including the logo, background color, and information in the header and footer. System
administrators control the default branding for all tenants.

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Foundations and Concepts

Table 2‑1. Tenant Configuration (Continued)
Configuration Area

Description

Notification providers

System administrators can configure global email servers that process email
notifications. Tenant administrators can override the system default servers, or add
their own servers if no global servers are specified.

Business policies

Administrators in each tenant can configure business policies such as approval
workflows and entitlements. Business policies are always specific to a tenant.

Service catalog offerings

Service architects can create and publish catalog items to the service catalog and
assign them to service categories. Services and catalog items are always specific to a
tenant.

Infrastructure resources

The underlying infrastructure fabric resources, for example, vCenter servers, Amazon
AWS accounts, or Cisco UCS pools, are shared among all tenants. For each
infrastructure source that vRealize Automation manages, a portion of its compute
resources can be reserved for users in a specific tenant to use.

About the Default Tenant
When the system administrator configures an Active Directory link using Directories management during
the installation of vRealize Automation, a default tenant is created with the built-in system administrator
account to log in to the vRealize Automation console. The system administrator can then configure the
default tenant and create additional tenants.
The default tenant supports all of the functions described in Tenant Configuration. In the default tenant,
the system administrator can also manage system-wide configuration, including global system defaults for
branding and notifications, and monitor system logs.

User and Group Management
All user authentication is handled by Active Directory links that are configured through Directories
Management. Each tenant has one or more Active Directory links that provide authentication on a user or
group level.
The root system administrator performs the initial configuration of single sign-on and basic tenant creation
and setup, including designating at least one tenant administrator for each tenant. Thereafter, a tenant
administrator can configure Active Directory links and assign roles to users or groups as needed from
within their designated tenant.
Tenant administrators can also create custom groups within their own tenants and add users and groups
to those groups. Custom groups can be assigned roles or designated as the approvers in an approval
policy.
Tenant administrators can also create business groups within their tenants. A business group is a set of
users, often corresponding to a line of business, department or other organizational unit, that can be
associated with a set of catalog services and infrastructure resources. Users and custom groups can be
added to business groups.

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Foundations and Concepts

Comparison of Single-Tenant and Multitenant Deployments
vRealize Automation supports deployments with either a single tenant or multiple tenants. The
configuration can vary depending on how many tenants are in your deployment.
System-wide configuration is always performed in the default tenant and can apply to one or more
tenants. For example, system-wide configuration might specify defaults for branding and notification
providers.
Infrastructure configuration, including the infrastructure sources that are available for provisioning, can be
configured in any tenant and is shared among all tenants. You divide your infrastructure resources, such
as cloud or virtual compute resources, into fabric groups and assign an administrator to manage those
resources as the fabric administrator. Fabric administrators can allocate resources in their fabric group to
business groups by creating reservations.
Single-Tenant Deployment
In a single-tenant deployment, all configuration can occur in the default tenant. Tenant administrators can
manage users and groups, configure tenant-specific branding, notifications, business policies, and
catalog offerings.
All users log in to the vRealize Automation console at the same URL, but the features available to them
are determined by their roles.

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Foundations and Concepts

Figure 2‑1. Single-Tenant Example
http://vra.mycompany.com/vcac/

Default Tenant
(Tenant config)

Business
group mgr

Tenant
admin

Business
Group
• User management
• Tenant branding
• Tenant notification
providers
• Approval policies
• Catalog management

Business
goup mgr

Business
Group

http://vra.mycompany.com/vcac/

Default Tenant

Reservation

(System and
infrastructure config)

Fabric
admin

System
admin

• Tenant creation
• System branding
• System notification
poviders
• Event logs

Reservation

Fabric
Group

IaaS
admin

Reservation
Fabric
admin

Reservation

Fabric
Group

Reservation
Fabric
admin

Reservation

Fabric
Group

Infrastructure Fabric

Hypervisors

Public
clouds

Physical
servers

Note In a single-tenant scenario, it is common for the system administrator and tenant administrator
roles to be assigned to the same person, but two distinct accounts exist. The system administrator
account is always administrator@vsphere.local, and the system administrator account creates a local
user account to assign the tenant administrator role.
Multitenant Deployment
In a multitenant environment, the system administrator creates tenants for each organization that uses
the same vRealize Automation instance. Tenant users log in to the vRealize Automation console at a URL
specific to their tenant. Tenant-level configuration is segregated from other tenants and from the default
tenant. Users with system-wide roles can view and manage configuration across multiple tenants.
There are two main scenarios for configuring a multi-tenant deployment.

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Foundations and Concepts

Table 2‑2. Multitenant Deployment Examples
Example

Description

Manage infrastructure configuration only
in the default tenant

In this example, all infrastructure is centrally managed by IaaS administrators and
fabric administrators in the default tenant. The shared infrastructure resources are
assigned to the users in each tenant by using reservations.

Manage infrastructure configuration in
each tenant

In this scenario, each tenant manages its own infrastructure and has its own IaaS
administrators and fabric administrators. Each tenant can provide its own infrastructure
sources or can share a common infrastructure. Fabric administrators manage
reservations only for the users in their own tenant.

The following diagram shows a multitenant deployment with centrally managed infrastructure. The IaaS
administrator in the default tenant configures all infrastructure sources that are available for all tenants.
The IaaS administrator can organize the infrastructure into fabric groups according to type and intended
purpose. For example, a fabric group might contain all virtual resources, or all Tier One resources. The
fabric administrator for each group can allocate resources from their fabric groups. Although the fabric
administrators exist only in the default tenant, they can assign resources to business groups in any
tenant.
Note Some infrastructure tasks, such as importing virtual machines, can only be performed by a user
with both the fabric administrator and business group manager roles. These tasks might not be available
in a multitenant deployment with centrally managed infrastructure.
Figure 2‑2. Multitenant Example with Infrastructure Configuration Only in Default Tenant
http://vra.mycompany.com/
vcac/org/tenanta/

http://vra.mycompany.com/
vcac/org/tenantb/

http://vra.mycompany.com/
vcac/org/tenantc/

Tenant A

Tenant B

Tenant C

Tenant
admin

Default
Tenant
(System and
infrastructure config)

System
admin

Tenant
admin

Business
group mgr

Business
Group

Reservation

Fabric
admin

Fabric Group

IaaS
admin

Resv
Fabric
admin

Resv

Fabric Group

Resv
Fabric
admin

Resv

Fabric Group

Infrastructure Fabric

http://vra.mycompany.com/vcac/

Hypervisors

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Public
clouds

Physical
servers

Foundations and Concepts

The following diagram shows a multitenant deployment where each tenant manages their own
infrastructure. The system administrator is the only user who logs in to the default tenant to manage
system-wide configuration and create tenants.
Each tenant has an IaaS administrator, who can create fabric groups and appoint fabric administrators
with their respective tenants. Although fabric administrators can create reservations for business groups
in any tenant, in this example they typically create and manage reservations in their own tenants. If the
same identity store is configured in multiple tenants, the same users can be designated as IaaS
administrators or fabric administrators in each tenant.
Figure 2‑3. Multitenant Example with Infrastructure Configuration in Each Tenant
http://vra.mycompany.com/
vcac/org/tenanta/

http://vra.mycompany.com/
vcac/org/tenantb/

http://vra.mycompany.com/
vcac/org/tenantc/

Tenant A

Tenant B

Tenant C

Tenant
admin

http://vra.
mycompany.com/
vcac/

Default
Tenant

Tenant
admin

Business
group mgr

Business
Group

Reservation

Fabric
admin

(System config)

System
admin

Tenant
admin

IaaS
admin

Fabric Group

Infrastructure

Hypervisors

Fabric
admin

IaaS
admin

Fabric Group

Fabric

Public
clouds

Fabric
admin

Fabric Group

IaaS
admin

Physical
servers

User Roles Overview
Roles consist of a set of privileges that can be associated with users to determine what tasks they can
perform. Based on their responsibilities, individuals might have one or more roles associated with their
user account.
All user roles are assigned within the context of a specific tenant. However, some roles in the default
tenant can manage system-wide configuration that applies to multiple tenants.

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Foundations and Concepts

System-Wide Role Overview
System-wide roles are typically assigned to an IT system administrator. In some organizations, the IaaS
administrator role might be the responsibility of a cloud administrator.
System Administrator
The system administrator is typically the person who installs vRealize Automation and is responsible for
ensuring its availability for other users. The system administrator creates tenants and manages systemwide configuration such as system defaults for branding and notification providers. This role is also
responsible for monitoring system logs.
In a single-tenant deployment, the same person might also act as the tenant administrator.
IaaS Administrator
IaaS administrators manage cloud, virtual, networking, and storage infrastructure at the system level,
creating and managing endpoints and credentials, and monitoring IaaS logs. IaaS administrators organize
infrastructure into tenant-level fabric groups, appointing the fabric administrators who are responsible for
allocating resources within each tenant through reservations and reservation, storage, and networking
policies.

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Foundations and Concepts

System-Wide Roles and Responsibilities
Users with system-wide roles manage configurations that can apply to multiple tenants. The system
administrator is only present in the default tenant, but you can assign IaaS administrators to any tenant.
Table 2‑3. System-Wide Roles and Responsibilities
Role

Responsibilities

System Administrator

Create tenants.

Configure tenant identity stores.

Assign IaaS administrator role.

Assign tenant administrator role.

Configure system default branding.

IaaS Administrator

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Configure system default notification providers.

Monitor system event logs, not including IaaS logs.

Configure the vRealize Orchestrator server for use
with XaaS.

Create and manage (view, edit, and delete)
reservations across tenants if also a fabric
administrator.

Configure IaaS features, global properties.

Create and manage fabric groups.

Create and manage endpoints.

Manage endpoint credentials.

Configure proxy agents.

Manage Amazon AWS instance types.

Monitor IaaS-specific logs.

Create and manage (view, edit, and delete)
reservations across tenants if also a fabric
administrator.

How Assigned
Built-in administrator credentials are
specified when configuring single sign-on.

The system administrator designates the
IaaS administrator when configuring a
tenant.

Foundations and Concepts

Tenant Role Overview
Tenant roles typically have responsibilities that are limited to a specific tenant and cannot affect other
tenants in the system.

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Foundations and Concepts

Table 2‑4. Tenant Role Overview
Role

Description

Tenant Administrator

Typically a line-of-business administrator, business manager, or
IT administrator who is responsible for a tenant. Tenant
administrators configure vRealize Automation for the needs of
their organizations. They are responsible for user and group
management, tenant branding and notifications, and business
policies such as approvals and entitlements. They also track
resource usage by all users within the tenant and initiate
reclamation requests for virtual machines.

Fabric Administrator

Manages physical machines and compute resources assigned
to their fabric groups and creates and manages the reservations
and policies associated with those resources within the scope of
their tenant. They also manage property groups, machine
prefixes, and the property dictionary that are used across all
tenants and business groups.
Note If you add the fabric administrator role to a system-wide
role such as IaaS administrator or system administrator, the
fabric administrator can create reservations for any tenant, not
just their own.

Blueprint Architects

Umbrella term for the individuals who are responsible for
creating blueprint components and assembling the blueprints
that define catalog items for consumers to request from the
service catalog. These roles are typically assigned to individuals
in the IT department, such as architects or analysts.

Catalog Administrator

Creates and manages catalog services and manages the
placement of catalog items into services.

Approval Administrator

Defines approval policies. These policies can be applied to
catalog requests through entitlements that a tenant administrator
or business group manager manage.

Approver

Any user of vRealize Automation, for example, a line manager,
finance manager, or project manager, can be designated as an
approver as part of an approval policy.

Business Group Manager

Manages one or more business groups. Typically a line
manager or project manager. Business group managers
entitlements for their groups in the service catalog. They can
request and manage items on behalf of users in their groups.

Support User

A role in a business group. Support users can request and
manage catalog items on behalf of other members of their
groups.

Business User

Any user in the system can be a consumer of IT services. Users
can request catalog items from the service catalog and manage
their provisioned resources.

Health Consumer

Any user of vRealize Automation, for example, a line manager,
finance manager, or project manager, can be designated as a
Health Consumer with read-only privileges for Health Service
reports.

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Tenant Roles and Responsibilities in vRealize Automation
You can assign tenant roles to users in any tenant. The roles have responsibilities that are specific to that
tenant.
Table 2‑5. Tenant Roles and Responsibilities
Role

Responsibilities

Tenant administrator

Customize tenant branding.

Fabric administrator

Application architect
To successfully add software components
to the design canvas, you must also have
business group member, business group
administrator, or tenant administrator role
access to the target catalog.

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Manage tenant identity stores.

Manage user and group roles.

Create custom groups.

Manage notification providers.

Enable notification scenarios for
tenant users.

Configure vRealize Orchestrator
servers, plug-ins and workflows for
XaaS.

Create and manage catalog
services.

Manage catalog items.

Manage actions.

Create and manage entitlements.

Create and manage approval
policies.

Monitor tenant machines and send
reclamation requests.

Manage property groups.

Manage compute resources.

Manage network profiles.

Manage Amazon EBS volumes and
key pairs.

Manage machine prefixes.

Manage property dictionary.

Create and manage reservations
and reservation policies in their own
tenant.

If this role is added to a user with
IaaS administrator or system
administrator privileges, the user can
create and manage reservations and
reservation policies in any tenant.

Assemble and manage composite
blueprints.

How Assigned
The system administrator designates a
tenant administrator when creating a
tenant. Tenant administrators can assign
the role to other users in their tenant at
any time from the Administration tab.

The IaaS administrator designates the
fabric administrator when creating or
editing fabric groups.

Tenant administrators can assign this role
to users in their tenant at any time from
the Administration tab.

Foundations and Concepts

Table 2‑5. Tenant Roles and Responsibilities (Continued)
Role

Responsibilities

Infrastructure architect

Create and manage infrastructure
blueprint components.

Assemble and manage composite
blueprints.

Define custom resource types.

Create and publish XaaS blueprints.

Create and manage resource
mappings.

Create and publish resource actions.

Create and manage software
blueprint components.

Assemble and manage composite
blueprints.

Add, edit, and remove container
components in a blueprint by using
options on the Design tab.

Add, edit, and remove container
network components in a blueprint
by using options on the Design tab.

To successfully add software components
to the design canvas, you must also have
business group member, business group
administrator, or tenant administrator role
access to the target catalog.
XaaS architect

Software architect
To successfully add software components
to the design canvas, you must also have
business group member, business group
administrator, or tenant administrator role
access to the target catalog.
Container architect

Container administrator

Catalog administrator

Business group manager

Use all available options in the
Containers tab, including the following
tasks:
n

Configure container hosts,
placements, and registries

Configure container network settings

Create container templates

Create and manage catalog
services.

Manage catalog items.

Assign icons to actions.

Add and delete users within their
business group.

Assign support user roles to users in
their business group.

Create and manage entitlements for

How Assigned
Tenant administrators can assign this role
to users in their tenant at any time from
the Administration tab.

Tenant administrators can assign this role
to users in their tenant at any time from
the Administration tab.

Tenant administrators can assign this role
to users and groups in their tenant at any
time from the Administration tab.

Tenant administrators can assign this role
to users in their tenant at any time from
the Administration tab.

The tenant administrator designates the
business group manager when creating or
editing business groups.

their business group.

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Request and manage items on
behalf of a user in their business
group.

Monitor resource usage in a
business group.

Change machine owner.

Foundations and Concepts

Table 2‑5. Tenant Roles and Responsibilities (Continued)
Role

Responsibilities

How Assigned

Shared access user

Interact with items that other business
group members deploy, including
running actions against them. By default,
shared access users cannot request
items.

The tenant administrator designates the
shared access users when creating or
editing business groups.

Approval administrator

Create and manage approval
policies.

Tenant administrators can assign this role
to users in their tenant at any time from
the Administration tab.

Approver

Approve service catalog requests,
including provisioning requests or
any resource actions.

The tenant administrator or approval
administrator creates approval policies
and designates the approvers for each
policy.

Support user

Request and manage items on
behalf of other users in their
business group.

The tenant administrator designates the
support user when creating or editing
business groups.

Change machine owner.

Request catalog items from the
service catalog.

Manage their provisioned resources.

Can view test results.

Cannot configure, edit, or delete a
test.

Business user

Health Consumer

The tenant administrator designates the
business users who can consume IT
services when creating or editing business
groups.
The IaaS administrator designates
privilege to any role..

Containers User Roles and Access Privileges
You can use container-specific roles to control who can create and configure containers by using options
in the vRealize Automation Containers tab and who can add and configure container components in
blueprints by using options in the Design tab.
When you enable Containers, two container-specific roles appear in the list of roles that a
vRealize Automation tenant administrator can assign to users and groups.
User Role

Description

Container
Administrator

Users and groups with this role can see the Containers tab in vRealize Automation. They can use all
theContainers options, such as configuring hosts, placements, and registries. They can also create
templates and provision containers and applications for configuration and validation purposes.

Container Architect

Users and groups with this role can use containers as components when creating and editing blueprints in
vRealize Automation. They have permission to see the Design tab in vRealize Automation and to work with
blueprints.

For information about vRealize Automation administrator and user roles, see User Roles Overview in the
vRealize Automation Information Center.
Tenant administrators can assign one or both of these roles to users or groups in their tenant at any time
by using options on the vRealize Automation Administration tab.

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IaaS administrators automatically inherit the container administrator permissions to perform Containers
administrative tasks.
Consumers of catalog items that involve containers inherit the necessary privileges to access the
resources provided by the Containers. They can open and see the details of their container-related items
and perform day-two operations on them.
vRealize Automation users authenticated through VMware Identity Manager have access to Containers.
vRealize Automation multi-tenancy and business group membership is implemented in Containers.

Service Catalog
The service catalog provides a common interface for consumers of IT services to use to request and
manage the services and resources they need.

Requesting and Managing Items in the Catalog
The catalog provides a self-service portal for requesting services and also enables business users to
manage their own provisioned resources.
The following example is of a typical life cycle.
Connie, the consumer of IT services, logs in to the vRealize Automation console. On the Catalog tab, she
browses for the service offerings she needs to do her job. The items that are available in the catalog are
grouped into service categories, which helps her find what she is looking for. After Connie selects a
catalog item, she can view its details to confirm that it is what she wants before submitting a request.
When Connie requests a catalog item, a form appears where she can provide information such as the
reason for her request, and any parameters for the request. For example, if she is requesting a virtual
machine, she might be able to specify the number of CPUs or amount of storage on the machine. If
Connie is not ready to submit her request, she can save it and return to it at a later time.
After Connie submits her request, it might be subject to approval. Connie can look on the Requests tab
to track the progress of her request, including whether it is pending approval, in progress, or completed.

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If the request results in an item being provisioned, it is added to Connie's list of items on the Items tab.
Here she can view the item details or perform additional actions on her items. In the virtual machine
example, she might be able to power on or power off the machine, connect to it through Remote Desktop,
reconfigure it to add more resources, or dispose of it when she no longer needs it. The actions she can
perform are based on entitlements and can also be made subject to approval based on flexible approval
policies.

Creating and Publishing Catalog Items
Catalog administrators and tenant administrators can define new catalog items and publish them to the
service catalog. Tenant administrators and business group managers can entitle the new item to
consumers.
Typically, a catalog item provides a complete specification of the resource to be provisioned and the
process to initiate when the item is requested. It also defines the options that are available to a requester
of the item, such as virtual machine configuration or lease duration, or any additional information that the
requester is prompted to provide when submitting the request.
For example, Sean has privileges to create and publish blueprints, including software components and
XaaS. After the blueprint is published, Sean, or a catalog administrator or a tenant administrator
responsible for managing the catalog, can then configure the catalog item, including specifying an icon
and adding the item to a service.
To make the catalog item available to users, a tenant administrator or business group manager must
entitle the item to the users and groups who should have access to it in the service catalog.

Services for the Service Catalog
Services are used to organize catalog items into related offerings to make it easier for service catalog
users to browse for the catalog items they need.
For example, catalog offerings can be organized into Infrastructure Services, Application Services, and
Desktop Services.
A tenant administrator or catalog administrator can specify information about the service such as the
service hours, support team, and change window. Although the catalog does not enforce service-level
agreements on services, this information is available to business users browsing the service catalog.

Catalog Items
Users can browse the service catalog for catalog items that they are entitled to request.
Some catalog items result in an item being provisioned that the user can manage through its life cycle.
For example, an application developer can request storage as a service, then later add capacity, request
backups, and restore previous backups.

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Other catalog items do not result in provisioned items. For example, a cell phone user can submit a
request for additional minutes on a mobile plan. The request initiates a workflow that adds minutes to the
plan. The user can track the request as it progresses, but cannot manage the minutes after they are
added.
Some catalog items are available only in a specific business group, other catalog items are shared
between business groups in the same tenant.

Actions
Actions are operations that you can perform on provisioned items.
Users can manage their provisioned items on the Items tab. The View Details option is always present in
the Actions menu. Additional options might be available depending on the type of item and the user's
entitlements. For example, Power On can be available for machines but not for HR services such as
provisioning a new hire.
You can perform request actions and immediate actions. Request actions initiate requests, which you can
track on the Requests tab and which can be made subject to approval. Statuses shown on the Requests
tab indicate the success or failure of the request, and do not indicate the successful completion of an
action. Immediate actions do not create requests and are always run immediately.
Built-in actions are available to all tenants and cannot be edited, although they can be enabled or
disabled. Custom actions can be created at a per-tenant level and shared across all business groups in
that tenant.

Entitlements
Entitlements determine which users and groups can request specific catalog items or perform specific
actions. Entitlements are specific to a business group.
Business group managers can create entitlements for the groups that they manage. Tenant
administrators can create entitlements for any business group in their tenant. When you create an
entitlement, you must select a business group and specify individual users and groups in the business
group for the entitlement.
You can entitle an entire service category, which entitles all of the catalog items in that service, including
items that are added to the service after you create the entitlement. You can also add individual catalog
items in a service to an entitlement. Services do not contain actions. You must add actions to an
entitlement individually.
For each service, catalog item, or action that you entitle, you can optionally specify an approval policy to
apply to requests for that item. If you entitle an entire service and a specific catalog item in that service in
the same entitlement, the approval policy on the catalog item overrides the policy on the service. For
example, you can entitle the Cloud Infrastructure service to members of a business group and allow them
to request any of its items with no approval policy. For a select number of catalog items that require more
governance for their provisioning, you can entitle those in the same entitlement and apply an approval
policy on just those items.

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The actions that you entitle to users apply to any items that support the entitled action and they are not
limited to the services and actions in the same entitlement. For example, if Connie, a consumer of
infrastructure services, is entitled to Machine Blueprint 1 and the action Reconfigure in one entitlement,
and she is also entitled to Machine Blueprint 2 in a different entitlement, then she is entitled to reconfigure
machines provisioned from Machine Blueprint 1 and Machine Blueprint 2, as long as both blueprints allow
that action to be performed.
If multiple entitlements exist for the same business group, you can prioritize the entitlements. When a
user makes a catalog request, the entitlement and associated approval policy that applies is the highest
priority entitlement that grants the user access to that item or action.

Approval Policies
An approval policy is used to govern whether a service catalog user needs approval from someone in
your organization to provision items in your environment.
A tenant administrator or approval administrator can create approval policies. The policies can be for preprovisioning or post-provisioning. If a pre-approval is configured, then the request must be approved
before the request is provisioned. If it is a post-approval, the request must be approved before the
provisioned item is released to the requesting user.
The policies are applied to items in an entitlement. You can apply them to services, catalog items, catalog
item components, or actions that require an approver to approve or reject a provisioning request.
When a service catalog user requests an item that includes one or more approval policies, the approval
request is sent to the approvers. If approved, the request moves forward. If rejected, the request is
canceled and the service catalog user is notified regarding the rejection.

Infrastructure as a Service
With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), you can rapidly model and provision servers and desktops across
virtual and physical, private and public, or hybrid cloud infrastructures.
n

Configuring Infrastructure Fabric
The IaaS administrator and fabric administrator roles are responsible for configuring the fabric to
enable provisioning of infrastructure services. Fabric configuration is system-wide and is shared
across all tenants.

Infrastructure Source Endpoints
Infrastructure sources can include a group of virtualization compute resources or a cloud service
account.

Data Collection
vRealize Automation collects data from infrastructure source endpoints and their compute
resources.

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Foundations and Concepts

Business Groups
A business group associates a set of services and resources to a set of users, often corresponding
to a line of business, department, or other organizational unit.

Machine Prefixes
You use machine prefixes to generate the names of provisioned machines. Machine prefixes are
shared across all tenants.

Resource Reservations
You can create a reservation to allocate provisioning resources in the fabric group to a specific
business group.

Machine Leases and Reclamation
Machine lease and reclamation options provides mechanisms for controlling resource use and
controlling prices.

Scaling and Reconfiguring Deployments
You can scale provisioned deployments to adjust to changing workload demands. You use the scale
in or scale out actions for horizontal scale, and the machine reconfigure action for vertical scale. You
govern scale and reconfigure actions by using entitlements, approval policies, or by designing
constraints directly into blueprints.

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Configuring Infrastructure Fabric
The IaaS administrator and fabric administrator roles are responsible for configuring the fabric to enable
provisioning of infrastructure services. Fabric configuration is system-wide and is shared across all
tenants.

An IaaS administrator creates an endpoint to configure access to an infrastructure source. When the
connection to an infrastructure source is established, vRealize Automation collects information about the
compute resources available through that source. The IaaS administrator can then organize those
resources into fabric groups and assign a fabric administrator to manage each group as well as crosstenant configuration such as machine prefixes.
A fabric administrator can create reservations to allocate provisioning resources in the fabric group to
specific business groups that the tenant administrator created during tenant configuration. Optionally, the
fabric administrator can configure reservation, network, or storage reservation policies. For example, they
can create a reservation policy to control placement of provisioned machines.
When the fabric administrator has created reservations, the IaaS architects can create and publish
machine blueprints for reuse in application blueprints and for catalog administrators to make available in
the service catalog.

Infrastructure Source Endpoints
Infrastructure sources can include a group of virtualization compute resources or a cloud service account.
An IaaS administrator configures an infrastructure source by specifying the endpoint details and
credentials that vRealize Automation can use to communicate with the source.
vRealize Automation collects information about all configured infrastructure sources at regular intervals.

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Table 2‑6. Examples of Infrastructure Source Endpoints
Infrastructure Source

Endpoints

vSphere

vCenter Server

vCloud Air

vCloud Air OnDemand or subscription service

vCloud Director

vCloud Director server

Amazon or OpenStack

Cloud service account

Hyper-V (SCVMM)

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager server

KVM (RHEV)

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization server

Compute Resources
A compute resource is an object that represents a host, host cluster, or pool in a virtualization platform, a
virtual datacenter, or an Amazon region on which machines can be provisioned.
An IaaS administrator can add compute resources to or remove compute resources from a fabric group. A
compute resource can belong to more than one fabric group, including groups that different fabric
administrators manage. After a compute resource is added to a fabric group, a fabric administrator can
create reservations on it for specific business groups. Users in those business groups can then be
entitled to provision machines on that compute resource.
Information about the compute resources on each infrastructure source endpoint and machines
provisioned on each compute resource is collected at regular intervals.
Table 2‑7. Examples of Compute Resources for Infrastructure Sources
Infrastructure Source

Compute Resource

vSphere (vCenter)

ESX or ESXi host or cluster

Hyper-V (SCVMM)

Hyper-V host

KVM (RHEV)

KVM host

vCloud Director

virtual datacenter

Amazon AWS

Amazon region

Data Collection
vRealize Automation collects data from infrastructure source endpoints and their compute resources.
Data collection occurs at regular intervals. Each type of data collection has a default interval that you can
override or modify. Each type of data collection also has a default timeout interval that you can override or
modify.
IaaS administrators can manually initiate data collection for infrastructure source endpoints and fabric
administrators can manually initiate data collection for compute resources.

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Table 2‑8. Data Collection Types
Data Collection Type

Description

Infrastructure Source Endpoint Data Collection

Updates information about virtualization hosts, templates, and
ISO images for virtualization environments. Updates virtual
datacenters and templates for vCloud Director. Updates
Amazon regions and machines provisioned on Amazon regions.
Endpoint data collection runs every 4 hours.

Inventory Data Collection

Updates the record of the virtual machines whose resource use
is tied to a specific compute resource, including detailed
information about the networks, storage, and virtual machines.
This record also includes information about unmanaged virtual
machines, which are machines provisioned outside of
vRealize Automation.
Inventory data collection runs every 24 hours.
The default timeout interval for inventory data collection is 2
hours.

State Data Collection

Updates the record of the power state of each machine
discovered through inventory data collection. State data
collection also records missing machines that
vRealize Automation manages but cannot be detected on the
virtualization compute resource or cloud endpoint.
State data collection runs every 15 minutes.
The default timeout interval for state data collection is 1 hour.

Performance Data Collection (vSphere compute resources only)

Updates the record of the average CPU, storage, memory, and
network usage for each virtual machine discovered through
inventory data collection.
Performance data collection runs every 24 hours.
The default timeout interval for performance data collection is 2
hours.

Network and security inventory data collection (vSphere
compute resources only)

Updates the record of network and security data related to
vCloud Networking and Security and NSX, particularly
information about security groups and load balancing, for each
machine following inventory data collection.

WMI data collection (Windows compute resources only)

Updates the record of the management data for each Windows
machine. A WMI agent must be installed, typically on the
Manager Service host, and enabled to collect data from
Windows machines.

Fabric Groups
An IaaS administrator can organize virtualization compute resources and cloud endpoints into fabric
groups by type and intent. One or more fabric administrators manage the resources in each fabric group.
Fabric administrators are responsible for creating reservations on the compute resources in their groups
to allocate fabric to specific business groups. Fabric groups are created in a specific tenant, but their
resources can be made available to users who belong to business groups in all tenants.

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Business Groups
A business group associates a set of services and resources to a set of users, often corresponding to a
line of business, department, or other organizational unit.
Business groups are managed in Administration > Users and Groups and are used when creating
reservations and entitling users to items in the service catalog.
To request catalog items, a user must belong to the business group that is entitled to request the item. A
business group can have access to catalog items specific to that group and to catalog items that are
shared between business groups in the same tenant. In IaaS, each business group has one or more
reservations that determine on which compute resources the machines that this group requested can be
provisioned.
A business group must have at least one business group manager, who monitors the resource use for the
group and often is an approver for catalog requests. Business groups can include support users. Support
users can request and manage machines on behalf of other group members. Business group managers
can also submit requests on behalf of their users. A user can be a member of more than one business
group, and can have different roles in different groups.

Machine Prefixes
You use machine prefixes to generate the names of provisioned machines. Machine prefixes are shared
across all tenants.
You should assign a default machine prefix to every business group that you expect to need IaaS
resources. Every blueprint must have a machine prefix or use the group default prefix.
Fabric administrators are responsible for managing machine prefixes. A prefix is a base name to be
followed by a counter of a specified number of digits. For example, a prefix of g1dw for group1 and
developer workstation, with a counter of three digits produces machines named g1dw001, g1dw002, and
so on. A prefix can also specify a number other than 1 to start the counter.
If a business group is not intended to provision IaaS resources, tenant administrators do not need to
assign a default machine prefix when they create the business group. If the business group is intended to
provision IaaS resources, tenant administrators should assign one of the existing machine prefixes as the
default for the business group. This assignment does not restrict blueprint architects from choosing a
different prefix when they create blueprints. A tenant administrator can change the default prefix of a
business group at any time. The new default prefix is used in the future, but does not affect previously
provisioned machines.

Resource Reservations
You can create a reservation to allocate provisioning resources in the fabric group to a specific business
group.
A virtual reservation allocates a share of the memory, CPU and storage resources on a particular
compute resource for a business group to use.

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A cloud reservation provides access to the provisioning services of a cloud service account, for
Amazon AWS, or to a virtual datacenter, for vCloud Director, for a business group to use.
A business group can have multiple reservations on the same compute resource or different compute
resources, or any number of reservations containing any number of machines.
A compute resource can also have multiple reservations for multiple business groups. In the case of
virtual reservations, you can reserve more resources across several reservations than are physically
present on the compute resource. For example, if a storage path has 100 GB of storage available, a
fabric administrator can create one reservation for 50 GB of storage and another reservation using the
same path for 60 GB of storage. You can provision machines by using either reservation as long as
sufficient resources are available on the storage host.

Configuring Reservation Policies
When a user requests a machine, it can be provisioned on any reservation of the appropriate type that
has sufficient capacity for the machine. You can apply a reservation policy to a blueprint to restrict the
machines provisioned from that blueprint to a subset of available reservations.
You can use a reservation policy to collect resources into groups for different service levels, or to make a
specific type of resource easily available for a particular purpose. When a user requests a machine, it can
be provisioned on any reservation of the appropriate type that has sufficient capacity for the machine. The
following scenarios provide a few examples of possible uses for reservation policies:
n

To ensure that provisioned machines are placed on reservations with specific devices that support
NetApp FlexClone.

To restrict provisioning of cloud machines to a specific region containing a machine image that is
required for a specific blueprint.

As an additional means of using a Pay As You Go allocation model for machine types that support
that capability.

Note Reservations defined for vCloud Air endpoints and vCloud Director endpoints do not support the
use of network profiles for provisioning machines.
You can add multiple reservations to a reservation policy, but a reservation can belong to only one policy.
You can assign a single reservation policy to more than one blueprint. A blueprint can have only one
reservation policy.
A reservation policy can include reservations of different types, but only reservations that match the
blueprint type are considered when selecting a reservation for a particular request.
Reservation policies provide an optional means of controlling how reservation requests are processed.
You can apply a reservation policy to a blueprint to restrict the machines provisioned from that blueprint to
a subset of available reservations.

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Machine Blueprints
A blueprint that contains a machine component specifies the workflow used to provision a machine and
includes information such as CPU, memory, and storage. Machine blueprints specify the workflow used to
provision a machine and include additional provisioning information such as the locations of required disk
images or virtualization platform objects. Blueprints also specify policies such as the lease period and can
include networking and security components such as security groups, policies, or tags.
A machine blueprint typically refers to a blueprint that contains only one machine component and the
associated security and networking elements. It can be published as a standalone blueprint and made
available to users in the service catalog. However, published machine blueprints also become available
for reuse in your design library, and you can assemble multiple machine blueprints, along with Software
components and XaaS blueprints, to design elaborate application blueprints for delivering catalog items
that include multiple machines, networking and security, software with full life cycle support, and custom
XaaS functionality to your users.
An example of a standalone virtual machine blueprint might be one that specifies a Windows 7 developer
workstation with one CPU, 2 GB of memory, and a 30 GB hard disk. A standalone cloud machine
blueprint might specify a Red Hat Linux web server image in a small instance type with one CPU, 2 GB of
memory, and 160 GB of storage.
Blueprints can be specific to a business group or shared among groups in a tenant, depending on the
entitlements that are configured for the published blueprint .
You can add custom properties to a machine component in a blueprint to specify attributes of a machine
or to override default specifications. You can also add property groups as a convenience for specifying
multiple custom properties.

Machine Leases and Reclamation
Machine lease and reclamation options provides mechanisms for controlling resource use and controlling
prices.
Machine leases provide access to a machine for a limited period.
Deployment reclamation allows you to identify underused resources and reclaim them from their owners.

Machine Leases
A blueprint can optionally define a lease duration for machines provisioned from that blueprint.
If a blueprint does not specify a lease period, machines are provisioned from that blueprint with no
expiration date. If a blueprint specifies a single value for lease duration, machines are provisioned from
that blueprint with an expiration date based on the blueprint lease duration. The expiration date is
calculated from the time of the request, not from when the machine is provisioned.
If a blueprint specifies a range of possible lease durations, a user can select the desired lease duration
within that range when submitting the machine request. Machine requests can be subject to approval
based on the requested lease duration.

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When a machine lease expires, the machine is powered off. When the archive period expires, the
machine is destroyed. You can reactivate an archived machine by setting the expiration date to a date in
the future to extend its lease, and powering it back on.
You can send notification emails to alert machine owners and business group managers that a machine's
lease is about to expire and again when the lease expires.
Users can be entitled to request a lease extension at any time before it expires. A business group
manager or support user can also change the expiration date for a machine after it is provisioned.

Reclamation Overview
You can use metrics to identify underused machines that might be candidates for deployment
reclamation.
You can use the basic metrics provided by vRealize Automation to sort and filter metrics information for all
of your machines, or you can configure a vRealize Operations Manager endpoint to provide metrics and
health badges for your vSphere virtual machines.
Select the candidate deployment and send a reclamation request to the owners of the machines. The
machine owner has a fixed period of time to respond to the request. If machines in the deployment are
still in use, the machine owner can stop the reclamation process and continue using the machine. If the
machine is no longer needed, the owner can release the machine for reclamation, in which case the
machine lease is ended. If the owner does not respond in a timely manner, a lease determined by the
administrator is imposed. If the owner continues to take no action, the machine is powered off on the new
expiration date, the machine is reclaimed, and the resources are freed.

Scaling and Reconfiguring Deployments
You can scale provisioned deployments to adjust to changing workload demands. You use the scale in or
scale out actions for horizontal scale, and the machine reconfigure action for vertical scale. You govern
scale and reconfigure actions by using entitlements, approval policies, or by designing constraints directly
into blueprints.

Scale In or Scale Out
After you provision a deployment, you can adjust to changing workload demands by increasing or
decreasing the number of instances of virtual or cloud machines in your deployment. For example, you
deployed a three-tiered banking application with a clustered application server node, a database node,
and a load balancer node. Demand increases, and you find that the two instances of your application
server node cannot handle all the traffic. Because your blueprint supports up to ten instances of the
application server, and you are entitled to scale actions, you can scale out your application. You navigate
to your provisioned application item in vRealize Automation and select the scale out action to add another
instance of your application server node to the deployment. vRealize Automation provisions a new
machine, installs the application software component, and updates your load balancer so your application
can handle the increased demands.

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Foundations and Concepts

If demand decreases, you can scale the deployment in. The newest machines and software components
are destroyed first, and your networking and security components are updated so that your deployed
application isn't using any unnecessary resources.
Table 2‑9. Support for Scalable Components
Component Type

Support
ed

Machine components

Yes

Scale out provisions additional instances of your machines, and scale in destroys
machines in last in, first out order.

Software components

Yes

Software components are provisioned or destroyed along with machines that are
scaled, and the update life cycle scripts are run for any software components that
depend on the scaled machine components.

Networking and security
components

Yes

Networking and security components, including NSX load balancers, security
groups and security tags, are updated for the new deployment configuration.

Notes

Scaling impacts the network and security, including load balancer, settings for the
deployment. When you scale in or scale out a deployment that contains one or
more nodes, the associated NSX networking components are updated. For
example, if there is an on-demand NAT networking component associated with the
deployment, the NAT rules are updated in accordance with the scaling request.
When you scale in or scale out a deployment that contains an associated load
balancer, the load balancer is automatically configured to include newly added
machines or to stop load balancing machines that are targeted for tear down.
When you scale out a deployment that contains a load balancer, secondary IP
addresses are added to the load balancer. Depending on whether you scale in or
scale out, virtual machines are added or removed from the load balancer and
saved or removed in the IaaS database.
XaaS components

XaaS components are not scalable and are not updated during a scale operation.
If you are using XaaS components in your blueprint, you could create a resource
action for users to run after a scale operation, which could either scale or update
your XaaS components as required. Alternatively, you could disable scale by
configuring exactly the number of instances you want to allow for each machine
component.

Nested blueprints

Yes

Supported components in nested blueprints might only update if you create explicit
dependencies to scaled machine components. You create explicit dependencies
by drawing dependency lines on the design canvas.

When you scale out a deployment, vRealize Automation allocates the requested resources on the current
reservation before proceeding. If the scale is partially successful, and fails to provision one or more items
against those allocated resources, the resources are not deallocated and do not become available for
new requests. Resources that are allocated but unused because of a scale failure are known as dangling
resources. You can try to repair partially successful scale operations by attempting to scale the
deployment again. However, you cannot scale a deployment to its current size, and fixing a partially
successful scale this way does not deallocate the dangling resources. You can view the request execution
details screen and find out which tasks failed on which nodes to help you decide whether to fix the
partially successful scale with another scale operation. Failed and partially successful scale operations do
not impact the functionality of your original deployment, and you can continue to use your catalog items
while you troubleshoot any failures.

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Foundations and Concepts

For a clustered deployment, in which the deployment created from a blueprint contains more than one
VM, scaling fails if the blueprint uses a hostname custom property but does not contain a machine prefix
value. To avoid this issue, you can use the machine prefix option in the blueprint definition. Otherwise, the
scaling function attempts to use the same hostname setting for each VM in the cluster. For more
information, see VMware Knowledge Base article 2148213 at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2148213.

Scale Up or Scale Down By Using Reconfigure
After you provision a vSphere, vCloud Air, or vCloud Director virtual or cloud machine you can adjust to
changing workload demands by requesting a machine reconfigure to increase (scale up) or decrease
(scale down) machine resource specifications for CPU, memory, storage, or networks. You can also add,
edit, or remove custom properties and change descriptions. You can request to reconfigure machines for
scale up or scale down that are in the On or Off state.
When you reconfigure a virtual or cloud machine for scale up, vRealize Automation allocates the
requested resources on the current reservation before proceeding. If the resources are not available, the
machine reconfigure fails. If a machine reconfigure request fails, any resources allocated for scale up are
deallocated and available for new requests. When you reconfigure a virtual or cloud machine for scale
down, resources are not made available to new requests unless the reconfigure finishes successfully.
Table 2‑10. Required Entitlements for Machine Reconfigure for Scaling Scenarios ( vSphere ,
vCloud Air , and vCloud Director only
Virtual or Cloud Machine Owner wants to...

Required Entitlements

Run the reconfigure for scaling immediately after any required
approvals are given.

Reconfigure

Specify a date and time to run the reconfiguration for scaling.

Reconfigure

Reschedule a reconfigure for scaling because the request was
not approved until after the scheduled time.

Reconfigure

Retry a failed reconfigure request.

Execute reconfigure

Cancel a failed reconfigure request.

Cancel reconfigure

Cancel a scheduled reconfigure request.

Cancel reconfigure

XaaS Blueprints and Resource Actions
XaaS architects can use the XaaS options to create blueprints and publish them to the service catalog.
They can also create and publish post-provisioning operations that the consumers can perform on
provisioned items.

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Foundations and Concepts

Creating XaaS Blueprints and Actions
By using the XaaS blueprints and resource actions, you define new provisioning, request, or action
offerings and publish them to the common catalog as catalog items.
You can create XaaS blueprints and actions for either requesting or provisioning. The XaaS blueprints for
requesting do not provision items and provide no options for post-provisioning operations. Examples of
XaaS blueprints for requesting include blueprints for sending emails, generating reports, performing
complex calculations, and so on. For an XaaS blueprint, the result is a provisioned item. You can create a
custom resource so that you can access and manage the items on the Items tab.
To define the XaaS specification, you create a blueprint and publish it as a catalog item. After you publish
a catalog item, you must include it in a service category. You can use an existing service or create one. A
tenant administrator or business group manager can entitle the whole service or only the catalog item to
specific users.
If you created a custom resource for a provisioned item, you can create resource actions to define the
post-provisioning operations that the consumers can perform. You can also create resource actions for an
item that is provisioned by a source different from the XaaS blueprints, for example by IaaS. For this
purpose, first you must create a resource mapping to define the type of the catalog item.

Custom Resources
You must create a custom resource so that you can create an XaaS blueprint for provisioning with the
option to access and manage the provisioned items. Custom resources define the items for provisioning,
and you can use them to define post-provisioning operations that the consumers can perform.
You create a custom resource to define a new type of provisioned item and map it to an existing
vRealize Orchestrator object type. vRealize Orchestrator object types are the objects exposed through
the APIs of the vRealize Orchestrator plug-ins. The custom resource is the output type of a blueprint
workflow for provisioning and can be the input type for a resource action workflow.
For example, if you have a running vCenter Server instance, and you also have the vCenter Server plugin that is configured to work with vRealize Orchestrator, all of the object types from the vCenter Server
API are exposed in vRealize Orchestrator. The vCenter Server plug-in exposes the vSphere inventory
objects in the vRealize Orchestrator inventory. The vSphere inventory objects include data centers,
folders, ESXi hosts, virtual machines and appliances, resource pools, and so on. You can perform
operations on these objects. For example, you can create, clone, or destroy virtual machines.
For more information about the vRealize Orchestrator object types exposed through the vCenter Server
API, see the vCenter Server Plug-In API Reference for vCenter Orchestrator.

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Foundations and Concepts

Resource Mappings
You create resource mappings between the vRealize Automation catalog resource type and the
vRealize Orchestrator inventory type to manage resources provisioned outside of XaaS.
For example, you might want to create an action so that users can take a snapshot of their Amazon
machines. For this action to work on an Amazon machine provisioned, the three components involved,
XaaS, vRealize Orchestrator, and IaaS, need a common language You create that common language by
adding a resource mapping in XaaS that runs a vRealize Orchestrator scripting action or workflow to map
the IaaS Cloud Machine resource type to the vRealize Orchestrator AWS:EC2Instance inventory type.
vRealize Automation provides resource mappings, and the underlying vRealize Orchestrator script
actions and workflows, for vSphere, vCloud Director, and vCloud Air machines.

XaaS Blueprints
An XaaS blueprint is a complete specification of a resource.
With XaaS blueprints, you publish predefined and custom vRealize Orchestrator workflows as catalog
items for either requesting or provisioning. Blueprints for requesting run workflows with no provisioning
and provide no options for managing a provisioned item. Before you create a blueprint for provisioning,
you must map the workflow output parameter as a custom resource. Then you can assign resource
actions that define post-provisioning operations.

Resource Actions
You can create custom resource actions to configure the post-provisioning operations that the consumers
can perform.
To create post-provisioning operations, you must publish vRealize Orchestrator workflows as resource
actions. To create a resource action for an item provisioned by using XaaS, you use a custom resource
as an input parameter for the workflow. To create a resource action for an item that is provisioned by a
source different from XaaS, you use a resource mapping as an input parameter for the workflow. When
you entitle the resource actions, they appear in the Actions drop-down menu of the provisioned items on
the Items tab.

Common Components
vRealize Automation includes several common components in addition to the service catalog and catalog
item sources such as Infrastructure as a Service and XaaS.

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Foundations and Concepts

Notifications
You can send automatic notifications for several types of events, such as the successful completion of a
catalog request or a required approval.
System administrators can configure global email servers that process email notifications. Tenant
administrators can override the system default servers, or add their own servers if no global servers are
specified.
Tenant administrators select which events cause notifications to be sent to users in their tenants. Each
component, such as the service catalog or IaaS, can define events that can trigger notifications, but none
of them are selected by default.
Each user can choose whether to receive notifications. Users either receive all notifications configured by
the tenant administrator or no notifications, they do not have fine-grained control over which notifications
to receive.
Some emails have links that users can use to respond to the notification. For example, a notification
about a request that requires approval can have one link for approving the request and one for rejecting
it. When a user clicks one of the links, a new email opens with content that is automatically generated.
The user can send the email to complete the approval.

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Foundations and Concepts

Configure an outbound mail
server to send notifications.

Do you want users
to be able to respond
to notifications?

Yes

Configure an inbound mail
server to receive notifications.

Enable notifications for
any events you want
to allow users to
receive updates for.

Do you want to
customize the
templates for IaaS
notifications?

Yes

TEMPLATE
Edit the configuration files
that control IaaS notifications.

Tell your users how to
subscribe to the
notifications you enabled.

Users get the
notifications they want.

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Foundations and Concepts

Branding
Each tenant can change the appearance of the vRealize Automation console and login pages.
System administrators control the default branding for all tenants. A tenant administrator can change the
branding of the portal including the login pages, logo, the background color, and the information in the
header and footer. If the branding for a tenant is changed, a tenant administrator can always revert back
to the system defaults.

Life Cycle Extensibility
The architecture of vRealize Automation is designed with extensibility in mind. To satisfy different
extensibility use cases, vRealize Automation offers a variety of configuration options and tools.

vRealize Automation Extensibility Options
vRealize Automation is a flexible cloud management platform that enables customization and extensibility
at multiple levels.

5. Call vRealize Automation services
from existing applications
ServiceNow
PMG
Remedy
Homegrown service catalog
2. Configure businessrelevant services
Specify provisioning
methodology
Service entitlements
Custom properties
Resource reservations
Specify custom
machine/OS properties
Etc.

vRealize Automation
vRealize Automation RESTAPI
Policy Management

Design Center

Multi-vendor,
Multi-cloud

Advanced Services
Designer

vRealize
Orchestrator
IT Process
Automation

4. Add new IT
services and
create new
day-2 operations
Storage as a
Service, Load
Balancing as a
Service, etc.
Backup a VM,
open a ticket or
a machine, etc.

1. Leverage existing and future infrastructure
Compute Infrastructure (virtual, physical,
public cloud)
Software deployment methodologies
Physical
Windows

Cloud

Virtual
VM VM VM

VM VM VM

vmware
vCloud

LINUX
vmware
vCloud
Provider
VMware
vSphere

VMware, Inc.

3. Integrate with
3rd party
management
systems
CMDB
DNS
IPAM
Load Balancers
Service Desk
Monitoring
Storage
Databases
Web Services
Etc.

Microsoft
Hyper-V

amazon
web services

CITRIX
Xen

Foundations and Concepts

Leveraging Existing and Future Infrastructure
vRealize Automation provides support for many types of infrastructure and provisioning methods.
IaaS administrators can integrate with several infrastructure sources including virtual hypervisors, such as
®
vSphere, Hyper-V, KVM (RHEV), and so on, public clouds including VMware vCloud Air ™ and Amazon
AWS, and physical infrastructure.
Blueprint authors can control many machine options, including provisioning methods, by configuring
blueprints for various types of infrastructure.
For a full list of supported infrastructure types and provisioning methods, see vRealize Automation
Support Matrix. For information about configuring infrastructure blueprints, see Configuring vRealize
Automation.

Configuring Business-Relevant Services
The vRealize Automation console enables administrators to configure business- and user-specific policies
through a web-based user interface without writing any code.
These business policies include entitlements and approvals for the service catalog, resource reservation
policies for infrastructure, and many others.
For information about customization tasks that you can perform through the vRealize Automation console,
see Configuring vRealize Automation.
Using custom properties, machine blueprint authors can define additional machine properties or override
their standard attributes for a variety of purposes.
For details about the use and configuration of custom properties, see Configuring vRealize Automation.

Extending vRealize Automation with Event-Based Workflows
You can use workflow subscriptions to run vRealize Orchestrator workflows based on events.
vRealize Automation provides event topics to which you can subscribe, triggering your custom
vRealize Orchestrator workflows when an IaaS resource is provisioned or modified.
For more information, see Life Cycle Extensibility.

Integrating with Third-Party Management Systems
Provisioning or decommissioning a new machine, especially for mission-critical systems, typically requires
interacting with a number of different management systems, including DNS servers, load balancers,
CMDBs, IP Address Management and other systems.
Administrators can inject custom logic (known as workflows) at various predetermined IaaS life cycle
stages. These IaaS workflows can call out to vRealize Orchestrator for bi-directional integration with
external management systems.
For details about machine life cycle extensibility, see Life Cycle Extensibility.

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Foundations and Concepts

Adding New IT Services and Creating New Actions
The XaaS enables XaaS architects to define new services and new management operations on
provisioned resources.
vRealize Automation provides a range of management operations that you can perform on machines.
Your organization may find it valuable to extend the default IaaS machine menus with new options, such
as creating a machine backup or running a security check.
It can also be beneficial to expose entirely new services in the service catalog, so that users can
automate other initiatives directly via the portal. Service architects can create XaaS blueprints for storageas-a-service, networking services or virtually any kind of IT service by using XaaS.
For details about how to create new catalog items, see Configuring vRealize Automation.

Calling vRealize Automation Services from External Applications
In some cases, organizations may want to interact with vRealize Automation programmatically rather than
via the vRealize Automation console.
For such scenarios, the vRealize Automation API provides a standardized, secured RESTful interface for
cloud access and interaction, controlled through business-aware policy for consumers such as users,
infrastructure, devices, and applications.
All blueprints, including the ones created via the XaaS, are automatically exposed through the
vRealize Automation API.

Distributed Execution
All core vRealize Automation workflows are executed in a distributed execution environment.
The vRealize Automation runtime environment consists of one or more DEM Worker instances that can
execute any workflow installed in the core engine. Additional Worker instances can be added as needed
for scalability, availability and distribution.
Skills can be used to associate DEMs and workflows, restricting execution of a given workflow to a
particular DEM or set of DEMs with matching skills. Any number and combination of skills can be
associated with a given workflow or DEM. For example, workflow execution can be restricted to a specific
datacenter, or to environments that support a specific API the workflow requires. The vRealize
Automation Designer and the CloudUtil command-line tool provide facilities for mapping skills to DEMs
and workflows.
For more information about distributed execution and working with skills, see Life Cycle Extensibility.

VMware, Inc.

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