Create a basic vCenter cloud account in VMware Aria Automation

You can add a basic vCenter cloud account for the account regions to which you want to deploy VMware Aria Automation cloud templates.

For network and security purposes, you can associate a vCenter cloud account with an NSX-T or NSX-V cloud account. An NSX-T cloud account can be associated to one or more vCenter cloud accounts. However, an NSX-V cloud account can only be associated to one vCenter cloud account.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you have the required service account credentials and have enabled HTTPS access on port 443. See Credentials required for working with cloud accounts in VMware Aria Automation.
• Verify that you have the cloud administrator user role. See What are the VMware Aria Automation user roles.
• Verify that you have a cloud proxy to use with this cloud account. See Add a cloud proxy to a vCenter in Automation Assembler.
• Verify that the cloud proxy VM is on and that the cloud proxy service is connected and running. See Verify that a cloud proxy is running on a target virtual machine.

Procedure

1. Select Infrastructure > Connections > Cloud Accounts and click Add Cloud Account.
2. Select the vCenter cloud account type.
   By default, On-Prem vCenter Server is selected. If you want to create a cloud account for a cloud connected vCenter for use with vSphere+, see Create a cloud account for a cloud connected vCenter.
3. Enter the vCenter server host IP address.
4. Select an existing cloud cloud proxy from the drop-down menu.

   You can also create a new cloud proxy for this cloud account. See Add a cloud proxy to a vCenter in Automation Assembler.

5. Enter your vCenter server administrator credentials and click Validate.

   All data centers that are associated with the vCenter account are data-collected.

   The following elements are data-collected, as are all vSphere tags for the following elements:

   • Machines
   • Clusters and hosts
   • Port groups
   • Data stores
6. Select at least one of the available data centers on the specified vCenter server to allow provisioning for this cloud account.
7. For efficiency, create a cloud zone for provisioning to the selected data centers.

   You can also create cloud zones as a separate step according to your organization's cloud strategy.

   For information about cloud zones, see Learn more about Automation Assembler cloud zones.

8. Select an existing NSX cloud account.

   You can select the NSX account now, or later when you edit the cloud account.

   For information about NSX-T cloud accounts, see Create an NSX-T cloud account in VMware Aria Automation.

   For information about making network association changes after you have deployed a cloud template, see What happens if I remove an NSX cloud account association in VMware Aria Automation.

9. If you want to add tags to support a tagging strategy, enter capability tags.

   You can add tags now, or later when you edit the cloud account. For information about tagging, see How do I use tags to manage Automation Assembler resources and deployments.

   For more information about how capability tags and constraint tags help control deployment placements, see the Constraint Tags and Placement video tutorial.

10. Click Save.

Results

The cloud account is added and the selected data centers are available for the specified cloud zone. Collected data such as machines, networks, storage, and volumes is listed in the Resources section of the Infrastructure tab.

Note: There is a unique form of a read-only vCenter cloud account created automatically when the Automation Service Broker Supervisor Namespaces Cloud Consumption Interface is enabled by using vCenter+ for VMware Aria Automation. You can add tags to this cloud account, and you can view its credentials, but you cannot change them. You do not need to do anything to configure or manage this cloud account.

What to do next

Configure remaining infrastructure resources for this cloud account. See Building your Automation Assembler resource infrastructure.