Aria Suite version 8.16/8.16.1 Released

VMware by Broadcom has released Aria Automation 8.16.1, Aria Operations 8.16, Aria Operations for Logs 8.16 and Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.16.

VMware Aria Operations for Networks 6.12.1 is also released, this has only a update to Eval license.

NOTE February 23th 2024: the Aria Automation/Aria Automation Config/Aria Automation Orchestrator 8.16.1 has been removed from the download page, and the release notes also removed.

NOTE Fabruary 28th 2024: Aria Suite Lifecycle and Aria Operations for Logs 8.16 has also been removed from the download page, and the release notes also removed.

Note February 29th 2024: all products are now released with a new build number.

Aria Automation 8.16.1, Aria Automation Config 8.16.1 and Aria Automation Orchestrator 8.16.1

What’s new:

• Automation
  • The onboarding policy setting is now moved to the onboarding plan creation
  • Installing VMware Aria Automation on hyperscalers is now supported
  • vCenter Licence Service integration for VMware Aria Automation
  • Provisioning Avi Load Balancer natively in VMware Aria Automation
  • Public (customer) facing API for the request graph
• Aria Automation Config
  • VMware Aria Automation Config UI enhancements
  • CVE-2024-22231 notice
  • CVE-2024-22232 notice
  • The Debian 10 CIS Benchmark is now available for VMware Aria Automation for Secure Hosts
• Aria Automation Orchestrator
  • he JDBC driver for Oracle databases is removed
  • vCenter Licence Service integration for Automation Orchestrator

See the full release notes here.

Aria Operations 8.16

What’s new:

• VMware Cloud Director (VCD) Operations and Chargeback
  • All the capabilities of Chargeback (previously known as VMware Chargeback or Tenant App) are available natively in VMware Aria Operations.
  • Dedicated launchpad view for VMware Cloud Director Infrastructure layer for all key Chargeback and operations capabilities.
  • Ability to build and assign VMware Cloud Director pricing policies through VMware Aria Operations policies.
  • Ability to manage tenant view or Operations Manager (metrics, pages, and data retention).
  • Support for tenant user and email management capabilities.
  • Support for tenant reports, alerts, and notification management capabilities.
  • Chargeback overview across Organizations, OVDCs, vApps, and VMs.
  • Support for bill generation and scheduling.
  • Support for VMware Cloud Director (VCD 10.5.1 and above) on VMware Aria Operations on-prem (VMware Aria Operations 8.16).
  • New and improved operations manager plugin in VMware Cloud Director (VCD 10.5.1 and above).
  • New migration flow to migrate from VMware Chargeback (VMware Chargeback 8.16) to VMware Aria Operations based Chargeback (VMware Aria Operations 8.16) and VMware Cloud Director operations (VCD 10.5.1 and above).
• VC Pricing and Chargeback
  • vCenter Pricing rate cards are now managed (created and assigned) under VMware Aria Operations Policies > VC Pricing instead of under Cost Drivers.
• Enhanced Accuracy in Network Performance Monitoring
  • Achieved a more detailed understanding of network performance by enhancing the granularity of packet loss statistics from 5% to 1%.
  • Significantly reduced maximum wait times from 1000ms to 200ms, ensuring quicker response times and better alignment with VMware Aria Operation monitoring cycles.
  • Enhanced the accuracy of statistics by increasing the burst size to 100 packets, providing a more comprehensive view within each 1-minute monitoring cycle.
  • Introduced a more detailed presentation of network performance metrics, including minimum (MIN), maximum (MAX), and average (AVG) figures for both packet loss and latency.
• Networking Enhancements
  • The following information is available for the NICs connected to Switches via LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol).
    • System description
    • MTU size (available for CDP).
    • Port description (to see whether the cables are plugged into the right port).
    • Link aggregation status for LACP configurations.
• Workload Placement Enhancements
  • A new feature has been added in Business Intent for excluding clusters and VMs from participating in WLP via tags.
  • A metric has been added to know the number of VMs moved via WLP.
  • REST API Support For WLP:
    • REST API support for the creation of a custom data center.
    • REST API support for adding Additional Logging Classes and enabling of debug mode to troubleshoot WLP failure scenarios.
    • REST API support has been added for all Operation Intent features available in the UI. The support has also been enabled for updating Capacity Threshold settings mentioned in Workload Automation Policy.
• VCF Compliance Pack based on VCF Audit Guides
  • VMware Cloud Foundation Compliance Pack is updated to support VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5 Audit Guide.
• GPU Metrics for VMware Private AI Foundation and Hosts with GPUs
  • GPU Properties and Metrics are added under Cluster and Host-level
  • Cluster level
    • Compute Utilization
    • Memory Usage and Utilization
    • Number of GPUs
    • Total GPU Memory
  • Host Level
    • Compute Utilization
    • Memory Usage, Utilization, Reserved & Total
    • Number of GPUs
    • Temperature 
    • Power Usage
• Events
  • Events contribute significantly to the RCA and significantly brings down the time spent on troubleshooting activities. User experience improvements have now made it simple to consume events along with Alerts and Symptoms in the Object browser view.
• Improved dashboard creation experience
  • Widgets are grouped under two categories such as, most-used and lesser used/to-be-deprecated widgets in the dashboard creation wizard.
• Localization
  • The core product and documentation have not been localized in this release of VMware Aria Operations.

See the full release notes here.

Aria Operations for Logs 8.16

What’s new:

• Support for Configuration APIs Related to User Management and Log Forwarding
  • New APIs are introduced to access and create user groups and manage user roles and capabilities.
  • A new API is added for log forwarding that shows the count of forwarded and dropped logs.
• User Experience Enhancements
  • The user experience of the Log Export and Shared Dashboard URLs configuration pages are enhanced to provide a more streamlined and intuitive experience.
• Performance Improvements 
  • The detection of smart fields in VMware Aria Operations for Logs has been optimized to decrease the number and time range of Schema Discovery queries freeing computation resources for other operations.
• Stability Improvements
  • Stability improvements are applied to the support bundle generation process to ensure a seamless experience.
• Security Fixes
  • This release resolves multiple security fixes. For more information on these vulnerabilities and their impact on VMware products, see KB – 96438.

See the full release notes here.

Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.16

If you have your upgraded VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle to 8.16.0 which was released on 20th Feb 2024, then you may check for new build released on 29th Feb 2024 and proceed to upgrade to this new build. Remember the version would not change, just the build number would change in this scenario. This would be a build to build upgrade.

• VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.16.0 Build 23334789 was released on 20th Febuary 2024
• VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.16.0 Build 23377566 was released on 29th Febuary 2024

What’s new:

• Password for admin@local to be stored as an OVF property
• “Only Sync” option while executing vSphere Template content-type capture
• VMware Aria Operations for Networks enhancements

See the full release notes here.