The Cloud Consumption Interface (CCI) enables Automation Service Broker DevOps users to provision Supervisor namespaces and use its associated services to create Kubernetes workloads ( VMs, TKGs, etc ) using mainly the VM Service and the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service within vSphere with Tanzu.

Getting Started with the Cloud Consumption Interface in Automation Service Broker

The Cloud Consumption Interface uses VMware Aria Automation projects and infrastructure and vSphere Kubernetes resources as the foundation on which CCI users can work with namespaces and associated services to create virtual machines and other resources. Services are pluggable UIs that follow SDK guidelines and they are built and tested as separate applications that have been incorporated into CCI. CCI contains wizards that guide you through the process of using services to create virtual machines, and other resources. When working with services, CCI automatically generates YAML code that users can download to use as the basis of deployments or IaaS resources.

To configure virtual machines or other resources for deployment using CCI, users must log in to Automation Service Broker, click the Consume tab and select Supervisor Namespaces. There will be one or more projects containing namespace classes available to you. Namespace classes, which function as templates that reserve resources for namespaces that users create are defined by administrators. After you select a namespace class, you can create a new namespace. A namespace functions as your personal workspace with a set of resources and services.

Note: Namespaces and other resources created in CCI are unique to that environment. Users should not attempt to manage them in other applications and products such as VMware Aria Automation Automation Assembler and vSphere.

Following administrative enablement, authorized DevOps users can activate CCI by selecting Supervisor Namespaces on the Consume tab in the Automation Service Broker application. The CCI Welcome page is displayed with a list of the projects that are available to the user, and it shows the namespace classes that are associated with the selected project. You can use the available namespace classes as templates to create new namespaces. Then, you can use services to create virtual machines or other components as part of their namespaces.

If you dismiss the Welcome page, you can also start working from the CCI Home page. This page lists the namespaces and projects available to you on separate tabs. In addition, the tree view on the left shows a list of available projects, and you can expand it to view the namespace classes within each project. By default, neither of these pages are displayed for administrative users.