VMware vRealize Automation 8.5.1 Released

VMware has released vRealize Automation 8.5.1.

What’s new:

• New “Project Supervisor” role for approvals
  • This release introduces a new out of the box role called “Project Supervisor” which can be used for approving deployment requests. Any user with this role can serve as an approver only for that specific Project. Learn more.
• Onboard vSphere networks
  • You can onboard vSphere network objects along with the VM while executing the onboarding plan. When a VM is onboarded, the attached vSphere network object is also onboarded and the network object is shown on the deployment canvas.
• Indicate vRO based catalog item status
  • Based on the status of vRO workflow, you can see if any items are valid/invalid/out of sync.
• Ability to enable/disable Log Analytics for Azure VM
  • New day 2 action to enable/disable log analytics of Azure VMs.
• SaltStack SecOps: New Benchmark for RHEL8 (CIS)
  • New certified compliance benchmark for Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 8 based on the Center for Internet Security (CIS) standards. This new benchmark allows the scanning and automated remediation of RHEL8 through the SaltStack SecOps add-on for vRealize Automation.
• Custom Resources with extensibility actions
  • Application architects can use extensibility actions in cloud templates to build complex applications. They can create custom resources based on extensibility actions and assess lifecycle operation and day2 context actions.
  • The extensibility action script can return text that can be directly populated as a custom component on the design canvas. Learn More.
• Kubernetes support in Code Stream Workspace
  • The Code Stream pipeline workspace now supports Docker and Kubernetes for continuous integration tasks. The Kubernetes platform manages the entire lifecycle of the container, similar to Docker. In the pipeline workspace, you can choose Docker (the default selection) or Kubernetes. In the workspace, you select the appropriate endpoint. The Kubernetes workspace provides:
    • The builder image to use
    • Image registry
    • Namespace
    • Node port
    • Persistent Volume Claim
    • Working directory
    • Environment variables
    • CPU limit
    • Memory limit.
  • You can also choose to create a clone of the Git repository.
• Ability to configure machine tags in VCT for VMs deployed in VMC
  • You can configure machine tags for a VM deployed on VMC and update the tag after initial deployment. These tags are used to dynamically assign a VM to an appropriate security group. This builds on similar capability introduced for NSX-T in earlier vRA release.
• Post DR, you can change the network settings of the vRA appliances, including new IP addresses, and continue to manage all workloads not impacted by the same DR event.
  • In case of a disaster recovery scenario, vRealize Automation is backed up by SRM and is brought up in a backup vCenter. With vRA this release, you can update the network settings, post DR without your vCenters being on a stretched L2. The same applies for the VMware Identity Manager. Any failed vCenter workloads are not managed by the newly-active vRA.
• Ability to change default Active Directory OU settings after VM provisioning.
  • You can now configure a special custom property in the YAML template and move machines to a different OU after the post provisioning task.
• Cloud Templates with dynamic vRO inputs
  • You can now leverage dynamic inputs in native Cloud Templates when vRO workflow based dynamic values are enabled in Cloud Templates input.
• Allow IPAM settings to be an input property on machine NIC component in the blueprint
  • Prior to this feature, IPAM properties always come from the network that the nic targets to. This feature allows customers to directly set gateway addresses, domain, dns and dns search domain via VCT and ignore the properties from the network.

See the full release notes here.