In our last post Understanding VMware vRealize Automation Architecture – Part 1 we talked about the architectural components involved in VMware vRealize Automation and also discussed about Simple Deployment Architecture and Distributed Logical Deployment Architecture wherein we have seen how we can achieve the availability of each of these components whether it’s vRealize Automation Appliance or vRealize Automation IaaS.

Dedicated this article to talk about the various services included both in vRealize Automation Appliance and vRealize Automation IaaS and what are the importance of each of these services.

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VMware vRealize Automation Appliance

vRealize Automation Appliance is a preconfigured appliance which deploys the vRealize Automation Server to existing Virtualized Infrastructure. Before proceeding further with the deployment of VMware vRealize Automation Appliance ensure all the prerequisites are met including Database Requirements (Default Installation Creates PostgreSQL Database Locally however multiple external database can be configured for redundancy), DNS Settings (Fully Qualified Domain Names should be used for identifying components), Hardware Requirements, Security Certificates and Time Synchronization settings.

When deploying the vRealize Automation administrative privileges are required, another important point to consider during the deployment is certificates which should be created well in advance so that they can be included as part of the installation because vRA installation creates self-signed certificates which are not recommended in a production environment.

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With the latest release of VMware vRealize Automation we now have VMware Identity Manager which has been replaced by Single Sign-on, in older versions of vRealize Automation we need to manage an extra appliance which provides challenges in achieving HA, with vRealize Automation 7 achieving High Availability is not a challenge anymore as we need to simply add another VMware vRealize Automation Appliance. Apart from easing the High availability by installing multiple instances of vRealize Automation vIDM (VMware Identity Manager) also provides us various other functionalities like (Multi Factor Authentication, OTB Smart Card Support and OTB 3rd Party SAML support).

vRealize-Automation

Now that we have seen the various services provided in VMware vRealize Automation appliance and their functionalities let’s have a look on another Major Component that we talked about IaaS in our last blog post and what are the various components and services within.

vRealize Automation Infrastructure as a Service

IaaS helps us to provision Servers and Desktops across Virtual, Physical and Cloud infrastructures, IaaS components are installed by a System Administrator on a Windows Machine which can be both a Physical or Virtual Machine, IaaS has various components involved which can be installed based on organization requirements.

  1. IaaS Website – Model Manager Web is another name for IaaS website component which provides the service authoring and infrastructure administration capabilities to vRealize Automation console. The Model manager is communicated with the IaaS website component that keeps providing all the updates which is sent by Distributed Execution Manager.
  2. Model Manager – Responsible for communicating with external systems and databases, it holds the core for business logic required for VMware vRealize Automation. These business logics has all the information required to connect external systems like VMware vSphere, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Cisco UCS Manager. Model Manager also provides communication with SQL Server database and Distributed Execution Manager.
  3. Manager Service – High Level Communication Service responsible for coordinating communication between vRealize Automation Agents, vRealize Automation Database, Authentication Services and SMTP
  4. Distributed Execution Manager – Model Manager has all the logic required for communication with external systems however at ground zero it’s DEM and Agents talk to these external systems. DEM are responsible for executing the business logic of vRealize Automation, interacting with external systems and to manage Virtual, Cloud and Physical Machine Resources. DEM, does it with the help of two important components i.e. DEM Orchestrator (Responsible for preprocessing and scheduling the workflows on DEM Worker (Communicates with External Systems and execution of Workflows)
  5. Agents – Likewise DEM agents also deal with endpoints and executing workflows, Agents are used for Managing and executing workflows on external systems like VMware vSphere, Citrix, Xen Server, Hyper-V, External Provisioning Infrastructure, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and WMI which helps us to enable data collection from windows machine managed by vRealize Automation

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