VMware vRealize Automation 8.5 Released

VMware has released vRealize Automaiton 8.5.

vRealize Automaiton 8.5

• Project Administrator can act as Approver for all approval requests
  • When creating an approval policy, administrators can select a Project Administrator (for the project in which the approval was triggered) as the approver. This means a policy can be created once, for the organization, or a group of projects, instead of a policy per project with specific users as approver. Learn more.
• Configure when IP address from IPAM is released
  • You can configure how long it takes for an IP address to be released from allocation once it is no longer used. This allows for faster provisioning of new workloads where IP addresses are scarce. There is no change to default behavior where it can take up to 30 mins before an IP address is released after its no longer used. Learn more.
• Limit the number of namespaces for a project on a K8s zone
  • The maximum number of supervisor namespaces that can be deployed for the project on a given K8s zone now has a configurable limit. Learn more about working with Kubernetes zones.
• VMware vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vRealize Automation 8.5 and vRealize Automation Cloud
  • The updated vRealize Automation plug-in supports scripting objects generation such as cloud accounts, cloud zones, projects, tags, and CRUD operations to build your own content. For each object, some sample content is provided by default. Learn more.
  • Technical limitations in vRealize Orchestrator/vRealize Automation 8.5.0:
    • The timeout period for REST operations is 2 minutes.
    • Masked custom property values coming from vRealize Automation do not work as input in the Update Project workflow, where custom properties hold encrypted values due to the different encryption logic implemented in vRealize Orchestrator. As a workaround, re-enter the encrypted value without the secret key.
    • No pagination support for vSphere cloud account, NSX-T, NSX-V, Data Collector, Regions.
• Enable resources across Azure regions to be added to the same resource group
  • An Azure resource group is created in an Azure region. However, resources from any Azure region can be added into it. This feature enables admins to add resources from other regions into the Azure RG. Learn more about working with Azure resource groups.
• NVDS-CVDS Migration Support
  • The infrastructure admin can migrate vSphere NVDS to CVDS and have vRA update its state including networks and deployments with new information. Additional considerations apply if using vSphere network representations in vRA.
• Snapshot management for Azure disks
  • You can now pass the resource group name, encryption set, and network policy while creating the disk snapshot. This builds on previous Azure disk snapshot functionality introduced in prior release. Learn more about Azure resource snapshots.
• Ability to enable/disable boot diagnostics for Azure VMs – Day 2
  • You can enable/disable boot diagnostics for Azure VMs as a day 2 action. This builds on ability to enable this as Day 1 action introduced in prior release. Learn more about the day 2 boot diagnostic actions.
• Notifications
  • The Service Broker administrator can view the list of available email notification scenarios and enable or disable them for all users in their organization:
    • Deployment lease expired
    • Deployment lease expiring
    • Deployment request approved
    • Deployment request rejected
    • Deployment request waiting for approval (notification sent to requester)
    • Pending approval request (notification sent to approver)
• Terraform runtime environment authentication
  • This release introduces authentication for adding Terraform service runtime version to vRA for more secure environments. Learn more.
• Support for new topologies with on-demand load-balancer as part of NSX-V to NSX-T migration
  • Next phase of NSX-V to NSX-T migration capability in vRA introduces support for additional topologies with on-demand load-balancers. Learn more.
• Support for NSX-V to NSX-T migration with vSphere 6.7
  • vRealize Automation NSX-V to NSX-T migration now supports migrating deployments that are running on vSphere 6.7. Previously, only vSphere 7.0 was supported. Learn more.
  • Note: Eventual migration from NVDS to CVDS will be required with vSphere 7.0. NSX-V to NSX-T migration automatically migrates to CVDS.
• Support for existing global security group as part of NSX-T Federation
  • vRealize Automation can now discover global security groups configured under NSX-T global manager. These groups can be leveraged in network profiles and VMware Cloud Templates to build deployments. This builds on initial support for NSX-T Federation introduced in vRA 8.4.1 release. Learn more.
• Custom Roles API
  • The APIs for Custom Roles (RBAC) are now available (Create, Read, List, Update, Delete).
  • To access API specifications for Custom Roles, see https:///project/api/swagger/swagger-ui.html?urls.primaryName=rbac%3A2020-08-10
• Day 2 Install of Salt Minions
  • You can deploy a Salt Minion on a previously deployed VM resource as a day 2 action. Learn more about the day 2 Salt configuration action.
• Day 2 Application of Salt State Files
  • You can apply one or more Salt State files to a previously deployed VM resource as a day 2 action. Learn more about the day 2 Salt configuration action.

See the full release notes here.