Multi-site architecture for vRA 8.1?

[jcossota_san]

Author :

URL : http:////docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automation/8.1/reference-architecture/GUID-B6422967-D0EF-47C1-8...

Topic Name : Deployment and Configuration Recommendations

Publication Name : vRealize Automation 8.1 Reference Architecture Guide

Product/Version : vRealize Automation/8.1

Question :

Looking at the documentation I do not see any reference for multi-site deployment architecture best practices.  Is it feasible to have a large deployment facilitate a linked site in another geographical region?

[Lalegre · Accepted solution]

I did not find any document related to multi-site and also the products that makes the whole solution are not prepared for Multi-Site. For example, vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager is a component that is not redundant and the Identity Manager that you can consume is only one as it is a "Global Environment"

At this stage i would like to think to the solution as Active-Passive on certain components. Actually you could have one vRA appliance in one site and the other one in the remote site and some sort of GSLB solution on top of it but i do not think that this is recommended at this stage. At least not without official documentation and recommendations from VMware.

In the meanwhile you can have all your solution deployed at one site and replicate all of the components to the remote site in case of a failure. If nothing fails you will be able to manage both sites (depending of networking and external dependencies)

[Czernobog]

vIDM is only deployed as "Global Environment", if you deploy all of the components using the easy installer. You can deploy vIDM at multiple sites actually. Or just deploy LCM and add your products separately.

This however only sort-of applies to vRA of which you can deploy 3 nodes, which would assume, that it is a active-passive cluster. However try to shut down one of the nodes and see if the product still works:)

edit: if you do not need to scale the product beyond what one vRA node is capable of, then just deploy one and replicate it somewhere, like Lalegre said. You can always expand the configuration using LCM later.

[anupampushkar]

Documentation is very poor at this point of time for vRA 8.X. Its not documented for Multi site + scaling details for small vs large deployment.

[jcossota_san]

Thanks everyone for the input - will chew on this for a bit and figure out best course of action until a best practice is published officially for the intertwining products.