Operations on VMware Cloud on AWS infrastructure and resources can be automated by leveraging the VMware Cloud on AWS APIs.
The VMware Cloud on AWS REST APIs are built on standard web protocols, HTTP and HTTPS, and network ports, 80 and 443 respectively.
To use VMware Cloud on AWS APIs, an API token must be generated from a VMware Cloud Services account to programmatically call the APIs. For more details on authentication and authorization of VMware Cloud on AWS API programming, please refer to the official VMware developer documentation at https://developer.vmware.com/apis/vmc/latest/.
One of the easiest ways to automate the management of the VMware Cloud on AWS Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) infrastructure is to use PowerCLI. PowerCLI is a command-line interface tool based on PowerShell, specifically built to interact with VMware products. The PowerCLI cmdlets use APIs under the covers to perform desired management and operational activities. Therefore, any operations you can complete with VMware Cloud on AWS APIs can generally also be performed using PowerCLI cmdlets.
To automate the deployment and management of workloads that reside in a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC, organizations can also leverage VMware Aria Automation. The VMware Cloud on AWS environment is added as a cloud account in VMware Aria Automation. Then with appropriate VMware Aria Automation configurations, workloads can be deployed to the VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC from VMware Aria Automation templates. Additionally, VMware Aria Automation can perform day 2 actions to the workloads, such as adding storage or creating snapshots. Security components, such as NSX-T distributed firewall rules and security groups, can be created using VMware Aria Automation templates as well.
Leveraging automation can help organizations consume VMware Cloud on AWS at an even faster rate and accelerate their cloud adoption journey.
