The deployment specification details the design decisions covering physical design and sizing for vRealize Automation.

To accomplish this specification, you require the following components:

  • SDDC Manager

  • vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager

  • Standalone NSX Tier-1 gateway

  • Clustered Workspace ONE Access

  • Supporting infrastructure services, such as Active Directory, DNS, NTP, and SMTP.

Deployment Type

vRealize Automation is deployed to support the design objectives for the solution component availability and number of workloads that the solution must support.

In this solution, vRealize Automation is deployed as a cluster of three nodes with an NSX load balancer in the default vSphere cluster in the management domain of a VMware Cloud Foundation instance. vSphere High Availability protects vRealize Automation by restarting a vRealize Automation virtual machine on an alternate ESXi host in the vSphere cluster if affected by an ESXi host failure. A vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler anti-affinity rule prevents the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines from running on the same ESXi host in the vSphere cluster.

All vRealize Automation services and databases are configured for high availability using the underlying Kubernetes-based architecture and orchestration. The vRealize Automation cluster can manage workloads across VMware Cloud Foundation instances up to the vRealize Automation scalability and concurrency maximums.

Table 1. Design Decisions on Deployment of vRealize Automation

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

PCA-VRA-CFG-001

Deploy vRealize Automation as a cluster of three nodes in the default management vSphere cluster.

vRealize Automation can manage one or more VMware Cloud Foundation instances from a single implementation.

The vRealize Automation deployment can also manage VMware Cloud on AWS and public cloud instances, if network access is permitted.

  • You must deploy the clustered Workspace ONE Access nodes as medium-size appliances to support the scalability of the vRealize Automation cluster deployment.​

  • You must maintainvRealize Automation within its scalability and concurrency maximums.

PCA-VRA-CFG-002

Deploy vRealize Automation in a vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager logical environment in VMware Cloud Foundation mode.

  • The vRealize Automation cluster is added to the SDDC Manager inventory for life cycle management.

  • SDDC Manager automates the configuration of the NSX load balancer on a dedicated NSX Tier-1 gateway in the management domain to load balance the connections across the vRealize Automation cluster nodes.

  • You must deploy vRealize Automation in a cluster configuration.

  • You must use NSX-T Data Center for vRealize Automation cluster load-balancing services.

  • Only a single vRealize Automation deployment can be deployed in VMware Cloud Foundation mode and imported into the SDDC Manager inventory.

PCA-VRA-CFG-003

Protect the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines by using vSphere High Availability.

Supports the availability objectives for vRealize Automation without requiring manual intervention during an ESXi host failure event.

None.

PCA-VRA-CFG-004

Apply vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler anti-affinity rules for the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines.

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler prevents the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines from residing on the same ESXi host and risking the high availability of the deployment.

  • You must perform an additional configuration to set up an anti-affinity rule.

  • For a default management vSphere cluster that consists of four ESXi hosts, you can put in maintenance mode only a single ESXi host at a time.

PCA-VRA-CFG-005

Add a VM group for the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines and set a VM rule to restart the Workspace ONE Access VM group before the vRealize Automation VM group.

You can define the startup order of virtual machines regarding the service dependency. The startup order ensures that vSphere High Availability powers on the virtual machines for vRealize Automation in an order that respects product dependencies.

You must manage the VM group and VM rules for the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines.

PCA-VRA-CFG-006

Place the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines in a designated virtual machine folder.

Provides the organization of the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines in the management domain vSphere inventory.

You must create the virtual machine folder during or after the deployment.

Deployment for Multiple Availability Zones

In an environment with multiple availability zones, the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines run in the first availability zone. If a failure occurs in the first availability zone, the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines are failed over to the second availability zone.

Table 2. Design Decisions on Deployment of vRealize Automation in Multiple Availability Zones

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

PCA-VRA-CFG-007

When using two availability zones, add the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines to the VM group for the first availability zone.

Ensures that, by default, the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines are powered on in the primary availability zone hosts group.

  • After the implementation of the second availability zone for the management domain, you must update the VM group for the primary availability zone virtual machines to include the vRealize Automation cluster virtual machines.

  • You must update the VM group for the primary availability zone virtual machines to also include the Workspace ONE Access cluster virtual machines, which are a dependency.

Sizing Compute and Storage Resources

vRealize Automation has the following resource requirements.

Table 3. vRealize Automation CPU, Memory, and Storage Resources

Appliance Size

CPU per Appliance

Memory per Appliance

Storage per Appliance

Medium

12 vCPUs

42 GB

236 GB

Extra large

24 vCPUs

96 GB

236 GB
This solution uses a vRealize Automation appliance size that supports the scalability objectives. For information about the scalability and concurrency limits for a highly-available vRealize Automation cluster deployment, see Scale Management for Private Cloud Automation for VMware Cloud Foundation or the vRealize Automation documentation.
Table 4. Design Decisions on Sizing of vRealize Automation Sizing

Decision ID

Design Decision

Design Justification

Design Implication

PCA-VRA-CFG-008

Deploy the vRealize Automation cluster nodes as medium-size or larger appliances.

A medium-size vRealize Automation appliance is typically sufficient, but can be scaled-up for increased workload scalability.

  • The ESXi hosts in the default management vSphere cluster must have physical CPUs with a minimum of 8 cores per socket. In total, the vRealize Automation cluster uses 36 vCPUs and 126 GB of memory in the default management vSphere cluster.

  • When you exceed the scalability and concurrency of the medium-size profile, scale up the cluster nodes size by using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.