Logical Design for Private Cloud Automation for VMware Cloud Foundation

The logical design of VMware Aria Automation includes all the integrations of VMware Aria Automation with the supporting infrastructure, private cloud services, and external solutions, such as source control, IPAM, Kubernetes, Terraform, and configuration management. The networking, identity and access management, product configurations, and secure access must be carefully designed for seamless integrations between VMware Aria Automation and other components.

Figure 1. Logical Design of VMware Aria Automation

Table 1. Logical Components for VMware Aria Automation

Single VMware Cloud Foundation Instance with a Single Availability Zone	Single VMware Cloud Foundation Instance with Multiple Availability Zones	Multiple VMware Cloud Foundation Instances
A three-node VMware Aria Automation cluster with an NSX load balancer deployed on the cross-instance NSX segment in the management domain. A vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler anti-affinity rule ensures that the VMware Aria Automation cluster virtual machines are not running on the same ESXi host.	A three-node VMware Aria Automation cluster with an NSX load balancer deployed on the cross-instance NSX segment in the management domain. A vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler anti-affinity rule ensures that the VMware Aria Automation cluster virtual machines are not running on the same ESXi host. A vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler VM/Host rule ensures that the VMware Aria Automation cluster virtual machines are running on an ESXi host group in the first availability zone of the management domain.	In the first VMware Cloud Foundation instance, a three-node VMware Aria Automation cluster with an NSX load balancer deployed on the cross-instance NSX segment in the management domain. A vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler anti-affinity rule ensures that the VMware Aria Automation cluster virtual machines are not running on the same ESXi host.

User Access

VMware Aria Automation provides a UI and RESTful API for consuming VMware Aria Automation services.

Cloud Accounts

VMware Aria Automation can simplify the multi-cloud experience by deploying and managing resources in private cloud and public cloud services. Each supported type of infrastructure is represented by a cloud account.

• Private cloud

• Public cloud

You add VI workload domains from a VMware Cloud Foundation instance as vCenter Server and NSX cloud accounts into VMware Aria Automation. With these cloud accounts, you can connect VI workload domains into VMware Aria Automation to facilitate comprehensive cloud automation services.

Supporting Infrastructure

VMware Aria Automation integrates with the following supporting infrastructure:

• DNS for providing name resolution for the VMware Aria Automation components.

• NTP for providing time synchronization to the VMware Aria Automation components.

• SMTP for sending email notifications from VMware Aria Automation.

• Workspace ONE Access, connected to an identity provider, for example, Active Directory, for identity and access management.

Integration with NSX

The integration of VMware Aria Automation with NSX supports designing and authoring cloud templates by using the networking and security features of NSX. You can use NSX network constructs, such as segments, routing, load balancing, and security groups.

You can configure automated network provisioning as a part of the cloud template design instead of as a separate operation outside VMware Aria Automation.

Usage Model

VMware Aria Automation provides a usage model that includes interaction between the cloud automation services, the supporting infrastructure, and the provisioning infrastructure. The usage model of VMware Aria Automation contains the following elements and components in them:

Figure 2. VMware Aria Automation Usage Model

Users

Cloud, tenant, group, infrastructure, service, and other administrators as defined by business policies and organizational structure. Cloud or tenant users in an organization can provision virtual machines and directly perform operations on them at the level of the operating system.

Cloud Templates

Cloud templates are infrastructure-as-code. VMware Aria Automation Assembler provides the creation of cloud templates in a design canvas, YAML, or HCL (Terraform).

Images and Flavors

Image and flavor mappings simplify the cloud template creation while adding greater flexibility and customization.

An image mapping groups a set of predefined target machine images for a specific cloud account region in VMware Aria Automation Assembler by using natural language naming.

A flavor mapping groups a set of target deployment sizes for a specific cloud account region in VMware Aria Automation Assembler by using natural language naming.

Provisioning infrastructure

Private and public cloud resources which together form a hybrid cloud.

Private cloud resources are supported hypervisors and associated management tools.

Public cloud resources are supported cloud providers and associated APIs.

VMware Aria Automation Assembler

Self-service capabilities for users to administer, provision, and manage workloads.

The default tenant uses the VMware Aria Automation administrator portal to set up and administer tenants and global configuration options.

A custom tenant uses the VMware Aria Automation tenant portal, which you access by appending a tenant identifier.

VMware Aria Automation Service Broker

Aggregates native content from multiple clouds and platforms into a single catalog with role-based policies.

VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator

Provides a standard set of plug-ins, including a plug-in for vCenter Server, with which you can orchestrate tasks in the different environments that the plug-ins expose.