Organizations that wish to automate the deployment of VMware Cloud environments should begin by understanding any prerequisites that must be satisfied before deploying a VMware Cloud environment.

These prerequisites vary between cloud providers, and organizations may have additional requirements to fulfill. Generally, a basic networking configuration is required, whether that is within the cloud environment or a new connection provisioned to the cloud provider.

VMware Cloud is powered by multiple APIs:

  • Cloud Provider API – This is the API used to configure native cloud resources to satisfy any prerequisites for the VMware cloud environment, as well as deploying the actual environment. Documentation and developer resources are available in each cloud provider’s documentation portal.

  • VMware APIs – Each VMware product, like vSphere, NSX, or HCX, has one or more APIs available for use. Documentation and developer resources are available at https://developer.vmware.com/apis .

  • Satisfy any prerequisites by using the Cloud Provider API or an automation tool that supports this API. This API will also be used to deploy and perform the initial configuration of the VMware Cloud environment. Once deployment is completed, organizations can automate against the various VMware APIs to configure compute, storage, networking resources in the new environment.

An Azure VMware Solution private cloud exists as a resource within the Azure Resource Management (ARM), allowing interaction via several different automation tools. First-party Microsoft tooling generated from the ARM specifications tends to support features shortly after being released. From an automation perspective, the considerations provided within this document are provided in a way that can be applied across different toolsets.

Recommendations:

  • Utilize Azure CLI , PowerShell , or a declarative template such as ARM Templates or Bicep Templates to deploy AVS in an automated manner.

  • Where possible, utilize ‘what-if’ to confirm changes before execution, pausing on resource deletion for verification.

  • For operations that will be single deployment but still require infrastructure as code, utilize Azure Blueprints, allowing for stamped & repeatable deployments without the need for automation pipelines.