vRealize Suite 2019 is Released with New Features

Posted By Rajesh Radhakrishnan October 24 2019

VMware has released vRealize Suite 2019, which is vRealize Automation 8.0, Operations Manager 8.0, vRealize Log Insight 8.0, vRealize Orchestrator 8.0 and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0.

vRealize Automation 8.0

Note that there is no upgrade from vRealize Automation 7.x, but there is a migration option, but not all implementation can be migrated, with this version.

Notes from the documentation: The full migration service functionality is not available in vRealize Automation 8.0 but will be available with the vRealize Automation 8.1 release.

What’s new:

  • Modern Platform using Kubernetes based micro-services architecture that provides
    • Simple install footprint for both non-HA and HA configurations
    • Scalable to meet modern workload challenges
  • Easy to setup and consume multi-cloud infrastructure surface
  • API-first approach to delivering cloud automation
  • Deliver Infrastructure-as-Code using a declarative YAML syntax
  • Iterative development of blueprints
  • Cloud Agnostic Blueprints
  • Collaboration across teams via sharing of objects
  • Self-service catalog coupled with agile governance
  • Simple policies
  • Native support for SPBM policies
  • Deploy IPv6 workloads on dual-stack IP (IPv4/ IPv6) networks in vSphere
  • CI/CD pipeline and automated application release management
  • Kubernetes/container management
  • New Action based extensibility (ABX), which allows you to write lightweight scripts, using node.js and python.
  • Git Integration to manage all blueprints, workflows, actions, and pipelines.
  • Brownfield workload on-boarding

See the full release notes her: Release notes

vRealize Operations Manager 8.0

What’s new:

Continuous Performance Optimization

  • Continuous Performance Optimization
    • Fully automated workload balancing across clusters based on business intent and operational intent for workloads running on a VMware Cloud on AWS environment.
    • Integration with vRealize Automation 8.0 for initial and ongoing workload placement.
  • Efficient Capacity and Cost Management
    • Capacity Management Enhancements
      • Ability to set capacity buffers for cluster and datastore cluster objects.
    • Capacity Monitoring Enhancements
      • Ability to monitor VMware Cloud on AWS costs using bills from the VMware Cloud Service portal.
      • Ability to combine private, hybrid, and public cloud costs in dashboards and reports.
      • Ability to track outstanding and year-to-date costs.
      • Breakdown of cost:
        • By subscriptions
        • On-Demand
        • By purchase history
    • Capacity Planning Enhancements
      • HCI capacity/cost management and planning. This release supports the infrastructure that runs vSAN software.
      • Enhanced private cloud-costing with per datacenter cost drivers:
        • Ability to specify costs per datacenter.
        • Enhanced network cost driver support for 25, 40, and 100 GB NICs.
        • Depreciation metrics for hosts.
      • Private cloud cost comparison across data centers for new workload planning:
        • Ability to compare VM costs across multiple datacenters.
        • Ability to select existing VMs or enter a profile for new VMs.
        • Ability to identify the cheapest cluster to run the workload.
        • Ability to link to the Add Workload scenario to quantify capacity shortfall.
  • Simplified Troubleshooting and Intelligent Remediation
    • Application Operations
      • Enhanced ability to monitor applications using Telegraf agents. Support for twenty applications and the most commonly used operating systems. Added support for applications such as NTPD, Java, and WebSphere.
      • Ability to download Telegraf agents on Windows machines without the need to disable User Account Control (UAC).
      • Support for additional metrics, KPIs, and out-of-the-box alerts for all the supported applications.
      • Ability to view CPU, memory, and disk utilization of the top-10 processes running on a virtual machine.
      • Agent-less discovery of software processes and services running on a virtual machine.
      • Ability to intelligently build business application relationships based on discovered services.
      • Ability to troubleshoot guest operating systems and application-related issues using custom script execution.
    • Enhanced Alerting Capabilities
      • ​Improved alert detail page with a simplified workflow to act on an incident.
      • Alert analysis with the Related Alerts tab using smart grouping to do recurrence analysis, peer impact, and relational impact.
      • Capability to automatically generate potential evidence leading to a root cause, with a quick launch into the Troubleshooting Workbench.
    • Accelerated Root Cause Analysis using the Troubleshooting Workbench
      • A unique troubleshooting tool that leverages machine learning algorithms to provide relevant pieces of evidence to arrive at a potential root cause.
      • Leverages relationship topology and time scope to automatically create impact scope to gather evidence.
      • Ability to set up a custom scope and to dynamically add peers to a topology to gather evidence from the peers. For example, all the VMs under the same application tier.
      • Ability to expedite troubleshooting by intelligently gathering and correlating information around:
        • Events – Includes metrics that have breached the usual behavior and major events that have triggered, within the selected scope and time.
        • Property changes – Includes impactful configuration changes that were discovered, within the selected scope and time.
        • Anomalous metrics – Includes a ranked set of metrics which have shown patterns of drastic change, within the selected scope and time.
      • Ability to easily identify potential evidence for further analysis to arrive at a root cause.
      • Ability to run multiple troubleshooting workbenches to deal with multiple incidents.
      • Availability of multiple points to launch into the troubleshooting workbench for easy and contextual access. For example, from the Object Summary page, Alert details, and Workbench under the Home page.
  • SDDC Configuration and Compliance
    • Enhanced and simplified workflows for compliance management. Grouping of benchmarks for easy navigation and better visual representation.
    • New enhancements to regulatory and SDDC (vSphere, NSX, and vSAN) compliance content.
    • Ability to monitor compliance for VMs managed by you in VMware Cloud on AWS.
    • Ability to import and export custom compliance standards.
    • Auto-remediation of compliance configuration drifts using the vRealize Orchestrator Management Pack.
  • Cloud Management Platform
    • Tighter integration between vRealize Operations Manager and vRealize Automation offers benefits of a single cloud management platform.
    • Ability to share common constructs such as cloud accounts, cloud zones, and projects across vRealize Operations Manager and vRealize Automation.
    • Ability to understand deployment cost:
      • Evaluate upfront costs on vRealize Automation.
      • Monitor ongoing costs per VM, deployment, or project.
  • Platform Enhancements
    • AWS and Microsoft Azure public cloud monitoring:
      • Ability to manage AWS and Microsoft Azure deployments natively.
      • Ability to discover and monitor inventory and services across multiple regions and accounts.
      • Built-in dashboards and predefined alerts to simplify troubleshooting.
    • Continuous availability:
      • Capability to extend vRealize Operations Manager cluster nodes across multiple availability domains.
      • The ability of the cluster to resist up to one availability domain failure and to recover without causing any downtime.
    • Runs on a new, more secure, and advanced operating system.
    • Simpler workflows for management and configuration of cloud accounts and other integration accounts.
    • REST API enhancements:
      • New REST API for setting the currency.
      • Support for a secure token-based authentication for API access.
    • Simpler initial onboarding with guided tours.
    • Enhanced Solutions Repository page for easier navigation.
    • Upgrade simplification by using a single .pak file to upgrade to vRealize Operations Manager 8.0.
  • Dashboards, Widgets, Reports, and Views Enhancements
    • Ability to re-run reports from the Generated Reports tab.
    • Modern layout and menus for the Manage Dashboard, Views, and Reports pages.
    • Support for the color picker for pie-charts in views.
    • Support for the doughnut type pie-chart in the distribution view.
  • Date Format Change
    • Depending on the browser language you choose, dates are displayed in the respective language format. For example, if you set the browser language to en-GB, dates are displayed in the dd/mm/yy format.
  • Geode Version
    • The Geode version has been upgraded to version 1.7 in this release.
  • Workload Utilization Widget
    • The Workload Utilization widget has been discontinued starting from this release. In future releases, the widget will not exist, and it is recommended that you update your dashboards accordingly.
  • End Point Operations Management Agent
    • The End Point Operations Management agent functionality has been replaced with the Telegraf agent. The current release is the last release of vRealize Operations Manager in which the End Point Operations Management agent is available.
  • VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC
    • To ensure compliance of your workload on VMware Cloud on AWS, vRealize Operations Manager 8.0 includes compliance alerts for customer-managed VMs.
  • Basic Authentication
    • Basic authentication using the REST API is deprecated and disabled in vRealize Operations Manager 8.0 by default. Use token-based authentication instead.
  • Metrics and Properties Enhancements
  • New and Updated Management Packs and Compliance Packs:
    • The VMware Management Packs and Compliance Packs that are new and those that are updated with significant changes for vRealize Operations Manager 8.0 are:
      • VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for CloudHealth 1.0
      • VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for vRealize Orchestrator 3.1
      • VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for NSX-T 2.2
      • vRealize Operations Management Pack for Storage Devices 8.0
      • vRealize Operations Compliance Pack for DISA 1.0.1
  • Refer to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix for all VMware Management Packs supported with vRealize Operations Manager 8.0.
  • The 3rd party authored Management Packs that are supported with 8.0 are listed in the VMware Compatibility Guide.

See the full release notes here: Release notes

vRealize Log Insight 8.0

What’s new:

  • vRealize Log Insight Server Features
    • Support for vRealize Log Insight server installation on Photon OS. This includes a fresh installation or upgrades from 4.8.
    • Certificate management
      • New Admin page for certificates
      • List all trusted certificates
      • Remove individual or selected certificates from trusted store
    • Filter based on thumbprint, certificate provider information (provider type or hostname), and expired status
    • Support for IPv6 environment (both pure IPv6 or dual-stack)
    • Enhanced log export > 20k log lines in your NFS share location
    • Rest APIs for vSphere and license usage
    • Audit log enhancements
      • Single audit log location
      • Logs for configuration changes
      • Logs for content changes like dashboards
    • The configurable alert cancellation period
    • Enhancements to vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, vRealize Operations Manager, VMware Identity Manager, vRealize Automation, and Linux content packs
  • vRealize Log Insight Agent Features
    • Log Insight Agent is now open-sourced.
    • New Agent platform support for:
      • Windows Server 2019​
      • Ubuntu 18.04​
      • Photon v3

See the full release notes here: Release notes

vRealize Orchestrator 8.0

With this version, the old Java client is no longer available.

What’s new:

  • Consistent and standardized environment and rapid deployment with containerization.
  • Git integration
    • Configure Git repositories
    • Push and pull content to a Git repository
    • Push content selectively
    • View diff before commit
    • Add comments on commit
  • Enhance search and filtering
    • Saved searches
    • Sorting by recently added and used content items
  • Export workflow runs and logs
  • Embedded vRealize Orchestrator in vRealize Automation 8.0
    • Fully capable vRealize Orchestrator Client accessible from the vRealize Automation service console.
    • Access to integrated external vRealize Orchestrator Clients. Available only if your vRealize Orchestrator instance is authenticated with the same vRealize Automation instance. For information integrating an external vRealize Orchestrator Client, see How do I integrate an external vRealize Orchestrator Client.
  • The vRealize Orchestrator Client is localized in 7 languages: Spanish, French, German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
  • License restrictions
    • Git integration is available only with a vRealize Automation license.
    • Role management is available only when using a vRealize Automation license
    • [IMPORTANT] If vSphere authentication is used, you must add a vRealize Automation license to get access to the Git integration and role management features. For more information on license-based feature enablement, see vRealize Orchestrator Feature Enablement with Licenses.
  • [IMPORTANT] Users from vRealize Orchestrator instances authenticated with vSphere can now be assigned to groups and given Run permissions.

See the full release notes here: Release notes

vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0

What’s new:

  • Easy Installer
    • A simple, intuitive, wizard-based installer for installing vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0, vRealize Automation 8.0 and VMware Identity Manager.
  • Extended lifecycle management of Identity Manager (Workspace One Access)
    • Cluster, Scale-out and Windows connector deployment for the latest version (3.3.1) of VMware Identity Manager.
    • Full-fledged directory management is available from the User Management app allowing users to add 3 different flavors (AD over LDAP, AD with IWA, LDAPS) of active directory to VMware Identity Manager through vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.
  • Enhanced user experience
    • New services based layout which provides better navigation and grouping. Intuitive navigation and better troubleshooting guidance.
    • Inventory sync to synchronize changes done outside of vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.
  • Improved support for License, certificate and password management
    • New dedicated service called Locker for managing licenses, certificates, and passwords for vRealize Suite of products.
    • Improved content management capabilities
    • Ability to work with multiple branches (capture from one SCM/branch and check-in to another SCM/branch)
    • Multi-delete (versions/contents) and multi-test
    • Public API support for content operations
    • Improvements on pipeline stub configuration
    • Multiple check-ins –> generate combined merge requests based on commit hash references
  • Migration
    • Migration from earlier versions of vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to the 8.0 version
    • Migration of environments, configurations, and content endpoints.

See the full release notes here: Release notes