Cloud accounts are the configured permissions that Automation Assembler uses to collect data from the regions or data centers, and to deploy cloud templates to those regions.

The collected data includes the regions that you later associate with cloud zones.

When you later configure cloud zones, mappings, and profiles, you select the cloud account to which they are associated.

As a cloud administrator, you create cloud accounts for the projects in which team members work. Resource information such as network and security, compute, storage, and tags content is data-collected from your cloud accounts.

Note: If the cloud account has associated machines that have already been deployed in the region, you can bring those machines into Automation Assembler management by using an onboarding plan. See What are onboarding plans in Automation Assembler.

If you remove a cloud account that is used in a deployment, resources that are part of that deployment become unmanaged.

Some cloud accounts and some integrations require a cloud proxy.

What is a cloud proxy

A cloud proxy routes information to, and collects data from, an Automation Assembler account and your on-premises applications such as vCenter and NSX and integrations such as Puppet and Google Cloud Platform. You deploy a supplied cloud proxy to a vCenter of your choice by using on-screen instructions. You can configure one cloud proxy for multiple vCenter instances, or you can have one cloud proxy for a specific vCenter.

Cloud accounts that require a cloud proxy:
  • vCenter
  • NSX-T
  • NSX-V
  • VMware Cloud on AWS
Integrations that require a cloud proxy:
  • Automation Orchestrator
  • Ansible
  • Puppet

For details about how the cloud proxy works, see Understanding the VMware Cloud Services Cloud Proxy.

Monitoring the cloud account health

To ensure that your cloud accounts are communicating with the target system, the status of the account appears on the card based on periodic health checks.


Screenshot of a cloud account card showing the warning status.

Warnings indicate that there might be a problem that needs your attention.


Screenshot of a cloud account page showing the status information at the top of the page.

In some cases, the details can help you resolve the issue. In other cases, you can run the Update option. It might be that the connection has been, in which case Update does not resolve the problem. One possible scenario is that the credentials have expired. To troubleshoot, first re-establish a connection with the updated credentials.