VMware vRealize Suite 8.6 Released

VMware has released vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.6, vRealize Automation 8.6 + vRealize Automation Salt Config 8.6, VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.6, vRealize Log Insight 8.6, vRealize Operations 8.6 and vRealize Network Insight 6.4.

vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.6

What’s new:

• Cloud Proxy deployment
• VCF enhancements
• Snapshot management enhancements
• Outbound notification integration
• vRealize Operations Manager support improvements
• Technical debt and product improvements
• Marketplace improvements
  • Previously, Marketplace connected with VMware Solutions Exchange to download content in vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. VMware Solutions Exchange is now deprecated, so Marketplace fetches the required content from VMware Cloud Marketplace.
• Content Management enhancements
  • The version history is now captured for Orchestrator Action and Orchestrator-ConfigurationElement when capturing the Orchestrator workflow.
  • You can deploy or publish cloud templates and XaaSBlueprints when releasing these content types.
• vRealize Cloud Universal simplification to help our users
• Perpetual and vRealize Cloud Universal licenses in vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager

See the full release notes here.

vRealize Automation 8.6 / vRealize Automation SaltStack Config 8.6

What’s new:

• CD Organizations can be added as a Cloud Account in vRA
  • Customers and partners with existing investment in VCD are now able to leverage vRA for modern template, catalog, pipeline, extensibility, multi-cloud management and governance capabilities while continuing to utilize VCD’s multi-tenanted infrastructure capabilities. VCD Organization owners will add their Org as a cloud account in vRA, map VCD OrgVDCs to vRA Cloud zones and continue to provision and manage IaaS resources into the OrgVDCs.
• Support Puppet Enterprise for machines without a public IP address
  • You can register machines without a public IP address.
• Ability to configure name of Azure NIC interfaces
  • You can use the new API to configure a name of NIC for a VM running on Azure. Learn more about using extensibility actions to configure a NIC name.
  • Note: This is only supported using API and not using VCT.
• Resource Quota policy additional day 2 governance
  • In this release, vRealize Automation Cloud includes Resource Quota Policy enhancements that add additional support for Day2 actions. Quotas now properly account for Day2 actions that affect allocations including disk and machine resizes. Learn more about resource quota policies.
• Ability to add External validation to a custom day2 action
  • You can apply a complex validation to the user inputs on the custom day2 request form. The validation is run externally as a vRealize Orchestrator action and prevents you from submitting the request form until the validation is complete. Learn more.
• New VMware Salt Modules Available
  • We are pleased to announce the release of Salt modules for vSphere/ESXi, NSX, and VMC. These modules were developed as a collaborative effort between VMware and the Salt Open Community and are available under the Salt GitHub project in ‘Salt Extension Modules for VMware’

See the full release notes here.

VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.6

This is a bug fix and maintenance release, This version fixes a security issue.

See the full release notes here.

vRealize Log Insight 8.6

What’s new:

• Alert Definition
  • The new alert management UI lets you create a granular rule definition of log alerts and events, with the ability to configure triggers in real time or group them across specific time windows. The Alert Definition options let you browse through all the log alert rules at one place. You can sort them by using text filters or by origin and type. You can select multiple alerts definitions and take actions quickly like enable, disable, or delete them.
• Extracted Fields in Alert Notifications
  • The new alert creation flow lets you include extracted fields in the title and description to enhance alert notifications.
• System Alerts
  • A system alert is triggered when the system wants to notify you about a problem. This page provides details about all the built-in system alerts available in vRealize Log Insight. You can use a toggle to enable or disable a system alert and configure email notifications to receive emails when an event is triggered.
• Role-based Access Control
  • Roles are associated with permissions that allow users to perform different activities within vRealize Log Insight. You can now create granular roles with an ability to configure access at a feature level. The administrator has the flexibility to provide no access, view, or edit access for each feature.
• NSX Identify Firewall Integration
  • The integration of NSX IDFW with vRealize Log insight lets NSX provide access control by using third-party providers such as Global Protect, ClearPass, and so on. vRealize Log Insight parses auth logs from the providers, extracts user ID-to-IP mapping information, and sends the data to NSX for further processing.
• Query Optimization
  • Query performance has remarkably improved for queries based on extracted fields.
• vRealize Log Insight Cloud
  • You can now request for a free trial for vRealize Log Insight Cloud to build a hybrid log management solution. Explore the following capabilities in vRealize Log Insight Cloud with detailed setup instructions available in-product:
  • Simplify Log Archival with Non-Indexed Partitions
    • Use vRealize Log Insight Cloud to archive logs to meet your long-term retention requirements. vRealize Log Insight Cloud provides a no-limit logging solution at a low cost, and eliminates any storage management overheads of the past. This enables easy accessibility to archived logs through on-demand queries.
  • Actionable Insights from your Logs with AI/ML Capabilities
    • Forward desired logs from multiple geographies and gain a unified view of your system. Use the AI/ML capabilities of vRealize Log Insight Cloud to identify critical issues across the environment and gain actionable insights.
• IPV6 Support
  • The following scenarios for IPV6 deployment are supported:
  • Pure stack IPv6 deployment
  • Dual stack IPv6 deployment with a fixed stack for inter-node communication
  • Integrations over IPv6 for vRealize Operations Manager, Active Directory, vSphere, and so on.
• Working with an Integrated Load Balancer
  • vRealize Log insight now supports a configuration of up to 60 virtual IP addresses.

See the full release notes here.

vRealize Operations 8.6

What’s new (Only headlines – for more information read the release notes):

• Security Vulnerability Fixed
• Business Application Management
• Content Management
• Streamlined Data Collection Account Management
• Costing Enhancements
• Capacity Enhancements
• Simplified Troubleshooting
• Global Settings Enhancement
• Dashboards and Views Enhancements
• Admin UI Enhancements
• Licensing
• Cloud Proxy
• Native Management Packs
• Metrics and Properties Modifications
• Instanced Metrics
• VMware vRealize Operations Certificate Renewal PAK File
• Basic Authentication
• Active Directory Authentication Sources

See the full release notes here.

vRealize Network Insight 6.4

What’s new:

• Network Assurance and Verification
  • Provides support for Cisco ASR 1000 and ISR 4000 models.
  • Provides support for Cisco N2K (FEX).
• VMware NSX-T Monitoring and Troubleshooting
  • Supports VMware NSX-T security SKU (DFW on DVPG).
  • Supports VMware NSX-T Federation deployments with visibility into global VMware NSX-T entities and cross-site VM-VM path.
• VMware Cloud
  • Introduces a new dashboard for the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDC.
  • Expands search functionality to include VMware Cloud on Dell EMC as a first-class entity and displays search results for both VMware Cloud SDDC and VMware Cloud on Dell EMC SDDC entities when searched for VMC SDDC.
  • Supports flow search for different types of VMware Cloud entities including VMware Cloud and VMware Cloud on Dell EMC.
  • Shows a list of VMware Cloud SDDCs and Policy Managers under the VMware Cloud section in the left navigation pane or in the homepage banner.
  • Introduces a VMware Cloud dropdown with different types of VMware Cloud data sources in the Accounts and Data Sources workflow.
  • Supports VMware Cloud on Dell EMC multi-rack.
• VMware SD-WAN
  • Provides intent-driven analytics for continuous monitoring and troubleshooting of the network and application performance related issues:
    • Provides ability to monitor and troubleshoot Edge uplink performance across some or all branches with insights to following:
      • QoE, jitter, latency, packet drops, and link uptime insights to troubleshoot applications and network performance degradation issues
    • Provides ability to monitor and troubleshoot applications performance at specific Edge or all/multiple Edges with insights to following:
      • Packet drop and Round trip time for application performance degradation troubleshooting
    • Provides ability to monitor and troubleshoot applications utilization at all VMware SD-WAN site
      • Traffic rate and Bandwidth utilization insights for selected applications at any particular Edge/Link
• Platform Enhancements
  • Introduces Streaming Databus to subscribe to real-time problem alerts and application changes.
  • Supports adding notes in alerts and intents definitions. Use notes to mention contacts, further instructions, or other additional information when an alert is raised.
• Application Discovery Improvements
  • Provides support to export discovered applications as .csv and control the attributes that are part of the exported file.
  • Provides an option to reconfigure platform when the flow based application discovery limits are reached.
• ServiceNow Integration enhancements
  • Provides instructions for ServiceNow integration capabilities based on the configured ServiceNow user permissions.
  • Supports post-import application filtering to remove unwanted applications imports in vRealize Network Insight.
• Others
  • Adding vRealize Log Insight as a data source in vRealize Network Insight is deprecated in 6.4 as vRealize Network Insight directly works with NSX-T notification mechanisms to provide alerts and change information.
  • Upgrade vRealize Network Insight using CLI is deprecated in 6.4. You can upgrade your setup using Online Upgrade or Single-Click Offline Upgrade.
  • To install and upgrade vRealize Network Insight by using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, see the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager Installation, Upgrade, and Management Guide.

See the full release notes here.