Automating the Software-Defined
Data Center with
vCloud Automation Center
11-6-2014
Henrik Mønster, VMware
© 2014 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.
2
Why does Cloud services seem so attractive?
Private Cloud
Pooling Elas+city Exis+ng Data Center Automa+on Self Service Hybrid Cloud
Op+mized Portable Scalable Public Cloud
Pooling Elas+city Automa+on Self Service Two reasons for Virtualizing
Cost per VM hour
(2GB instance)
20¢
18¢
16¢
1
14¢
12¢
Standardization
and pooling
10¢
8¢
2
6¢
4¢
Automation
2¢
0¢
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
55%
Utilization
60%
65%
70%
75%
80%
Data Centers Are Silos
Windows
Linux
SQL
Oracle
SAP
Big Data
Slow Infrastructure Service Delivery Times
Days - Weeks
Wait
Wait
Infrastructure
Service
Wait
Work
Manual efforts:
4 - 6 Hours
§  Organizational siloes lead to wait times in slow workflows
§  Time consuming manual tasks
§  Manual configurations lead to inconsistencies, errors and need for rework
… but even with infrastructure automation what about the application?
What Is Needed
Accelerate Service Delivery Times
Minutes
Automate service delivery in a
SINGLE SOLUTION
Infrastructure Services
Wait
Wait
Wait
Application Delivery
Work
Wait
Wait
Wait
Work
Changes
§  Rapid implementation times with flexibility to extend existing environments
§  Control through governance
§  Efficiency through cost-containment
§  Standardized configurations
VMware’s Approach: Abstraction and Personalization
Agility via automating delivery of personalized services
Application
Policies
Abstraction to
“Model once–deploy anywhere”
Production
Applications
Test
Development
Private Cloud
Machine
Policies
Public Cloud
ü 
VM’s with Network
Resource Pools
Infrastructure
Policies
Personalize Services through
§  Business Policies
§  Machine Policies
§  Application Policies
§  Reservation Policies
Self-Service Catalog and Cloud Service Costing
vCloud Automation Center
Self - Service
Policy-Based Governance with Automated Delivery
Application Release Automation
Infrastructure
Services
Application
Services
Custom
Services
Unified Service Catalog: Applications, Infrastructure, XaaS, Desktops
Your logo
Portal branding per
tenant
App store
experience
Service category
Extensible to new
services
Custom Service
Entitlements and
Approvals for each
item
Provide Transparency into Service Costs & Prices
Total Cloud Cost
Based on out of the box values
and vCenter integration
Loaded Unit Costs
of CPU, MEM, Storage
automatic pricing of blueprints
Who is Using What
Cost and Usage by
BU, App
Auto-generate rate cards providing transparency into the fully burdened cost
Establish IT as a Broker of IT Services
Make better decision when to leverage public cloud resources
vs. internal service delivery
Infrastructure Services
vCloud Automation Center
Self - Service
Policy-Based Governance with Automated Delivery
Application Release Automation
Infrastructure
Services
Application
Services
Custom
Services
Multi-vendor, Multi-cloud Infrastructure
vCloud Automation Center
Self - Service
Policy-Based Governance with Automated Delivery
Application Release Automation
Infrastructure
Services
Application
Services
vCloud Automation Center
Physical
Linux
Virtual
Custom
Services
Cloud
vCloud
Hybrid
Service
Windows
Cloud Providers
vSphere
Hyper-V
XenServer
The VMware Personalized,
Business-relevant Cloud
Security
Cloud
Administrator
Policies
Templates
SLA
Fine-grained policies personalize services
to meet unique IT and business needs
Cost Profile
Service Blueprints
Service Tier
Request
Private
Virtual
Provision
Manage
Retire
Provision
Manage
Retire
Archive
Provision
Manage
Retire
Archive
Private
Physical
Public
Cloud
Dev/Test
Request
Approval
Production
Request
Desktop
vCloud Automation Center
Shared Infrastructure
Contain Cost by Identifying and Reclaiming
Inactive VMs
Automated Reclamation Workflow
IT Compute
Infrastructure
Stranded
Host
Resources
Convert
Lease
Removal
Approved
A
B
C
Notify
Owner
Underutilized,
Inactive &
Abandoned VMs
Notify
Owner
Verify
Usage
Eliminate
Known
Good
Archive
VM
Monitor
Reclamation Efficiency
and Cost Savings
Expire
VM
Delete
VM
VM
In Use
Reclaim
Resources
Define different policies and reclamation processes by group
Infrastructure Management:
Networking and Security Integration
Dynamically Provision and Decommission
NSX Logical Services
New Features
§  Simplified Multi-Tier App Deployment
§  Improved Connectivity
−  Deployment of logical switches and
networks
§  Enhanced Security
−  Intelligent placement of workloads in
security groups protected by firewalls
§  Increased Availability
−  Via deployment of NSX distributed
firewalls and load balancers
Benefits
§  Deliver secure, scalable,
performing application-specific
infrastructure on-demand
Application Services and
Application Release Automation
vCloud Automation Center
Self - Service
Policy-Based Governance with Automated Delivery
Application Release Automation
Infrastructure
Services
Application
Services
Custom
Services
Accelerate Application Deployment
§  Streamline the deployment and update process
§  Leverage pre-built components
§  Re-use application models across environments and clouds
Application Blueprint
Components
Automate Application Deployments
Re-use application
blueprints to ensure
consistency
Re-use update profiles to
ensure consistency
CHANGE
Dev
Test
Prod
vSphere
vCloud
Rapidly provision consistent environments across clouds and
promote changes across environments
Leverage Existing Investments in
Configuration Management
§  Partnership with Puppet Labs, OpsCode (Chef) and Saltstack
§  Accelerate workload deployments
§  Remediate configuration drift towards desired state configuration
Dev
Test
Prod
Desired State
Configuration
And Drift
Remediation
Configuration
Drift
ü 
vSphere
!
=
ü 
vCloud
!
=
ü 
!
Custom Services
vCloud Automation Center
Self - Service
Policy-Based Governance with Automated Delivery
Application Release Automation
Infrastructure
Services
Application
Services
Custom
Services
Add Custom IT Services (XaaS) in Minutes
vCloud Automation Center
Self - Service
Policy-Based Governance with Automated Delivery
Application Release Automation
Infrastructure
Services
Application
Services
Advanced Service Designer
Round up the existing out-of-box
infrastructure, application and desktop
service capabilities
Custom
Services
§  Automate Delivery Process
Example Use Cases
§ 
§ 
§ 
§ 
§ 
§ 
§ 
§ 
§ 
New Employee On-boarding
Email/Mail Box Setup
Storage as a Service
Network services
Backup/recovery
Security/Compliance
AD Management tasks
Software Install/Update
Password Management
Limited only by your Imagination !
•  Specify resource and action
•  Define automation flow using
VCO workflows and plug-ins
§  Define Request Forms
•  Prepopulate forms with
input/output from VCO workflows
•  Easy yet rich customization
§  Configure Governance Policies
•  Service Entitlements
•  Approvals
vCAC — Designed to Be Extensible
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Policy
Management
Design Center
Multi-vendor,
Multi-cloud
Advanced
Services
Designer
vCO
2. Configure
business relevant
services
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Monitoring
Storage
Databases
Web Services
Etc.
vCloud Automation Center REST API
IT Process
Automation
ServiceNow, PMG,
Remedy, Homegrown
service Catalog
•  CMDB
5. Call vCAC services from existing applications
•  DNS
•  IPAM
vCloud Automation Center•  Load Balancers
•  Service Desk
3. Integrate with 3rd
party management
systems
4. Add new IT
services & day-2
operations (XaaS)
1. Leverage existing and future infrastructure
Specify provisioning methodology
Service entitlements
Custom properties
Resource reservations
Specify custom machine/OS properties
Etc.
•  Compute Infrastructure (virtual,
physical, public cloud)
•  Software deployment methodologies
vCenter Orchestrator Overview
Features
Platform
Drag-&-drop
design
•  Create powerful workflows
easily by drop-&-dragging prebuilt actions
Cloud
scalability
•  Execute hundreds of workflows
in parallel to meet Cloud scale
Flexible
triggers
•  Launch workflows from the
vSphere Web Client, vCAC,
web browser, schedule, event,
and API
Automate
VMware
•  100% coverage of vSphere and
vCloud Director APIs
•  Unmatched VMware content
Included with
vCenter Server
•  Included with vSphere at no
extra cost
•  Installed with vCenter
vSphere
Ecosystem
Plug-ins
Key Benefits
•  Integrate VMware solutions into your IT
environment and processes
•  Reduce IT OpEx and total cost of ownership of
VMware solutions
•  Automate your cloud and accelerate transition
to “IT as a Service” model
High-level Product Architecture
•  Windows
•  Mac & Linux
vCO Platform
(Access points)
vCO Platform
(Engine, 64-bit)
Designer
•  vSphere Web
Client
Operator
•  AMQP
•  SNMP
External
Notifications
•  SOAP
•  REST
•  vCloud Automation
Center
•  Service Catalogs
Web Services
Webview Library
Workflow Library
Workflow Engine
vCO Plug-Ins
Management
Systems
IT Infrastructure
…
……
•  Oracle
•  MS SQL Server
•  PostgreSQL
API Virtualization
vCO Current Plug-ins
Standard Protocols
VMware Applications
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
vCenter Server 4.0, 4.1, 5.0 & 5.1
vCloud Director 1.0, 1.5 & 5.1
vCloud Automation Center 5.1, 5.2
vCenter Update Manager 4.1, 5.0 & 5.1
vCenter Chargeback 2.0
vCenter Configuration Manager 5.5 & 5.7
vCenter Orchestrator Multinode 5.0 & 5.1
vSphere Auto Deploy
VMware Service Manager 9.1
VMware Service Elasticity
VMware Hadoop as a Service
Partner Applications
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Bluecat Networks
BMC Atrium CMDB & Remedy
Cisco UCS Manager
EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager
EMC ViPR
Egenera PAN Manager
F5 Networks
Infoblox NIOS
Microsoft Active Directory
Microsoft Windows PowerShell
NetApp WFA
Radware vDirect
ServiceNow
Up.time Software
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
AMQP / RabbitMQ
Email (POP3 and SMTP)
HTTP-REST
JDBC
SOAP
SNMP v1, v2c and v3
SQL
SSH
Telnet
XML
Coming in 2014
•  Lots of good stuff!
vCO Workflow Designer – Highly Visual
•  Drag and drop
•  Conditional logic
•  Pause, wait until, counters,
etc.
•  Exception handling
•  Role-based access control
•  Generate PDF documentation
•  And more ...
Integrate with
vCO,
and youWeb
get the
integration with
Integration
with
vSphere
Client
vSphere Web Client for free!
Your Workflows
shown here
vCAC Integration with Infoblox
vCloud Automation Center
Cloud
Consumer
Service
Blueprint
s
Request
Approva
l
Provision
Manage
Retire
vCenter Orchestrator Plugin
Allocate IP Address
and DNS Host Record
Archive
An Evolutionary Cloud Deployment Approach
Proof of
Concept
Limited Scale
Production Pilot
Full-Scale
Production
Expanded
Scope
Phase 5: IT as Service Broker
• 
• 
Operate like a Business,
Control what goes Public
Phase 4: App Release Automation
•  Automate the Release Process / DevOps
Phase 3: Apps / Middleware
•  Deliver Standardized Application and
Middleware Services to Apps Teams
Phase 2: Self-Service
•  Expose Infrastructure Services
to Consumers
Phase 1: Automation
•  Automate Infrastructure w/OOB Fct.
•  Integrate with Existing Environments
Consulting
and education services
for each delivery phase
blogs.vmware.com/management
Questions