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gradinka
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

vRealize Automation 7.5 is now available

It is my pleasure to announce that VMware vRealize Automation 7.5.0 and vRealize Orchestrator 7.5.0 are now available.

What's New?

Modernized UI and Consumer UX

vRealize Automation has a new look and feel and streamlined flows for common self-service tasks.

·       UI updated to VMware Clarity standard

·       Larger catalog cards show more of the description

·       Cleaner catalog view

o  Multiple instances of the same catalog item across business groups are now rolled up; the user selects the business group at request time

·       Items and Requests tab merged into new Deployments tab

·       Request details for decommissioned resources moved to the Administration tab

·       Improved status of in-progress requests

·       History view shows all requests associated with a single deployment over time

·       Improved search capabilities across product menus and objects

·       Contextual access to documentation from the product UI

·       Home page and portlets are deprecated in this release

·       Save button on requests is deprecated in this release

Improved Integration with vRealize Operations

This release introduces deployment dashboards for application owners and enhancements to intelligent workload placement capabilities via integration with vRealize Operations.

·       Show deployment alerts and key metrics (CPU, memory, IOPS, and network) for machines in the deployment details view

·       Enable optimization of vRealize Automation managed workloads to align with vRealize Operations placement policy

o  This builds on an earlier integration for optimizing initial placement to allow ongoing optimization of existing workloads

For information, see vRealize Operations Manager Based Monitoring and Continuous Optimization Using vRealize Operations Manager.

Configuration Automation Framework

Native integration with external Ansible Tower configuration management tool.

·       OOTB support for Ansible Tower as first class citizens in vRealize Automation

·       Drag and drop Ansible Tower object in the Blueprint design canvas

·       Parameterize and support early and late binding/request time

·       Dynamically select Ansible job templates,including playbooks, for application configuration

·       Support Day 2 actions to register or decommission machines

For information, see Create an Ansible Endpoint and Add an Ansible Component to a vSphere Blueprint.

NSX-T Data Center Native Integration

vRealize Automation now has native integration with NSX-T Data Center.

·       OOTB support for NSX-T Data Center as first class citizen in vRealize Automation

·       Drag and drop the following NSX-T Data Center services in the blueprint design canvas

o  On-demand load balancer

o  On-demand routed network

o  On-demand NAT 1-to-many network

o  Existing security group

·       Support Day 2 actions

o  Update security applied to a deployed VM

o  Change NAT rules for on-demand NAT network

For information, see Create a NSX-T Endpoint, Understanding NSX-T Deployment Topologies, and Designing Blueprints with NSX-T Settings.

Microsoft Azure Blueprint Enhancements

·       Support for Azure Managed Disks

·       Enhanced Support for Azure regions

For information, see Create a Microsoft Azure Endpoint and Create a Blueprint for Microsoft Azure.

Install, Upgrade, Migrate, and Patching Improvements

For more information, see Installing or Upgrading vRealize Automation.

Troubleshooting Improvements

·       Improvements to Force Delete/Re-Submit (failed/orphaned deployments)

·       Post-migration validation

·       Consistent log tracing across solution

·       Expose trace-id to the vRealize Orchestrator plug-in API

vRO database clustering and configuration

·       vRO database configuration moved to vRA VAMI

·       Embedded vRO database (Postgres) is now able to be clustered and supports failover.

Custom Forms Improvements

For more information about custom forms, see Customizing Blueprint Request Forms.

Event Broker Improvements

For more information, see Define Workflow Subscriptions Details and Assigning a Workflow to a Subscription.

Internationalization

For more information about product language support, see the VMware Product Globalization Guide.

vRealize Orchestrator 7.5

vRealize Orchestrator 7.5 introduces a number of improvements, bug fixes, and extends the automated configuration with new options:

·       With the updated Orchestrator Client you can:

o  Run and re-run workflows

o  Monitor performance data and real time tracking of the workflow execution

o  Import and export packages

o  Create and edit scheduled workflows

·       Introducing a new method of the internal Postgres database clustering and migration vRealize Orchestrator through the VAMI interface

o  Database configuration is moved to VAMI

o  Join and remove cluster nodes operations are moved to the VAMI

o  The embedded Postgres database is clusterable and supports failover.
Support for all external databases (mssql, oracle, etc) has been discontinued.

·       Troubleshooting

o  Export vRealize Orchestrator plug-in configuration with log bundle

o  Inspect inputs and outputs of the nested workflows after run is completed

o  The API to get filtered list of script actions by datatype given

15 Replies
agbiront
Contributor
Contributor

Just upgraded from 7.4

Everything went smoothly during the upgrade but I'm having an issue. If a blueprint has a Custom Form it sometimes won't load after you click request. It hangs there forever. When they load they do it inmediately, but they now show a checkbox that reads "_snapshot_propagation" even though it does not exist such checkbox nor property in the Form.

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rwk1982
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Just upgrade from 7.4 to 7.5 and have the same "running for ever" problem with Custom Forms. I think this is an internal vRA problem and has nothing to do with the Custom Form. Even a complete empty CS will not load.

Drink coffee.. Do stupid things faster with more energy...
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Czernobog
Expert
Expert

In 7.4 and earlier, a Request would fail, if it is approved after ~7 days. An exception would be thrown like here: [Delegated token must be instance of class com.vmware.vcac.authentication.http.spring.oauth2.OAuth2Token: null]. It's not a bug per se, rather an annoying feature, where an approval token is generated during submission, with a timeout of 7 days. Is this feature still present in 7.5? Or are requests automatically cancelled after the token expires?

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rwk1982
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I had a talk with VMware BCS and the Custom-Form-Loads-Forever-Problem was passed on to Engineering. If you are using Custom Forms i would not recommend an Upgrade to 7.5 at the moment...

Drink coffee.. Do stupid things faster with more energy...
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agbiront
Contributor
Contributor

I agree.

There is a quick workaround. Press F5. After the refresh the custom form loads. But I wouldn't recommend updating a production environment if you use Custom Forms. It's unprofessional to tell the customers "just press F5".

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sivarajmadhu
Contributor
Contributor

not able to see PKS endpoint in vRA7.5, can you please assist me on this.

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Czernobog
Expert
Expert

Do yourself a favor and to not upgrade to 7.5 yet. This seems to be by far the most broken and bugged release of the 7.x generation. Other important things besides the Custom Forms are broken - Approvals are not assigned correctly, snapshot creation results in the vm becoming unmanageable, vRB user to BU mapping gets wiped, vROps events are not shown.

The new GUI is unintuitive and forces you to take part in a filtering orgy just to return some basic elements. There is also no global search, instead the user gets multiple search bars. Overall extremly disappointing, it would nice if the energy spent to troubleshoot all the issues post-release would be used to QA the product before going GA.

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Can you give us more information on the problems you're seeing in 7.5 aside from custom forms?

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Czernobog
Expert
Expert

Already gave extensive feedback to the CSE & our TAM contact, after a failed upgrade. We are waiting for the hotfix(es) before trying again.

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Can you share that here so other users have the benefit of your experiences?

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LadaVarga
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

UI looks better that before but I really don't like that portlets and home page were decrepated.

I would like to see the report/table where I can see:

My bussiness group with all % with allocation.

I want see how many machines and resources are occupied by every user.

Where I can see the list of reuests? One of my request failed and I want send the requestID to my IT administrator but I don't know where I can get it (There is not in failed deployment)

How I can select all users in filter in deployment page?

Lada

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orian
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I am in version 7.3.0.

Would you suggest me to upgrade to 7.5, or to wait next version or bug fixes?

Thanks!

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

My personal recommendation at this time is to at least wait until hot fix 1 becomes available before going to 7.5.

daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Hotfix 1 for vRA 7.5 is now available here:  https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/60310

Don't forget to absolutely always snapshot before installing this or any hotfix.

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Zueritram
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for the info!

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