Release Versions

vRealize Automation Cloud | March 2023

vRealize Autamation 8.11.2 | 21 March 2023

  • vRA 8.11.2 build number 21452955

  • Ext VA 8.11.2 build number 21452956

  • SSC 8.11.2 build number 21404147

Updates made to this document

Date

Description of update

Type

March 11 2023

Initial publishing for vRealize Automation Cloud March 2023

March 21 2023

Initial publishing for vRealize Automation 8.11.2

About vRealize Automation

You can find information about these new features and more at VMware vRealize Automation and in the signpost and tooltip help in the user interface. Even more information is available when you open the in-product support panel where you can read and search for related topics, and view community posts and KBs, that appear for the active user interface page.

Notice: Release Notes for previous releases are archived yearly:

Before you begin

Familiarize yourself with the supporting documents.

VRealize Automation Cloud

VRealize Automation 8.11

After setting up your users, you can use the Getting Started and Using and Managing guides for each of the included services. The Getting Started guides include an end-to-end proof of concept. The Using and Managing guides provide more in-depth information that supports your exploration of the available features. Additional information is also available in vRealize Automation product documentation.

After installing vRealize Automation and setting up your users, you can use the Getting Started and Using and Managing guides for each of the included services. The Getting Started guides include an end-to-end proof of concept. The Using and Managing guides provide more in-depth information that supports your exploration of the available features. Additional information is also available in vRealize Automation 8.11 product documentation.

For information on vRealize Orchestrator 8.11 features and limitations, see the vRealize Orchestrator 8.11 Release Notes.

SaltStack Config Upgrade Requirements

Before you can upgrade your SaltStack Config appliance you must upgrade the Master plugin. For information on upgrading the Master plugin, see Upgrade the Master Plugin.

March 2023/ vRA 8.11.2 What's New

  • Upgrade Deprecated Cloud Extensibility Proxy Versions

    As of April 28, all vRealize Automation Cloud Extensibility Proxies on versions 8.3 to 8.8 will be deprecated and no longer supported by VMware. Customers are encouraged to upgrade their extensibility proxy before April 28th 2023. For information on how to upgrade the extensibility proxy, refer to Upgrading a cloud extensibility proxy.

  • vRealize Automation API Documentation for some services are now upgraded to OpenAPI 3.0 standard

    vRealize Automation API Documentation for services like Blueprint, Catalog, Deployment and Migration Assistant are now upgraded from OpenAPI 2.0 to OpenAPI 3.0 standard.

    If a new API client library needs to be generated for these services, it is recommended to use to OpenAPI 3.0 standard.

  • Day 0 support for Azure disk performance tiers

    vRealize Automation supports Azure performance tiers when provisioning Azure Premium managed disks. In your VMware Cloud Template, you can set the performanceTier property for Azure managed disks to specify the applicable performance tier.

  • Ability to upgrade the Salt Master plugin from SaltStack Config

    SaltStack Config now provides the ability to upgrade Master Plugin to the latest version directly from the UI.

  • Support for Azure Government Cloud with vRealize Automation

    vRealize Automation now supports Azure for US Government Regions as an endpoint.

Known Issues

  • Storage policy not taken into account when picking datastore

    During the allocation phase of a deployment, when a datastore is being selected for the disks included in the deployment it is possible that the storage profiles are not taken into account. Hence, a datastore that does not mach the constraints set by the storage profiles could be selected for the disk.

  • A file with user credentials is created in the CD-ROM unit for some Windows VMs

    Deploying a Windows VM in vCenter Server with the usernamePassword authentication method for remoteAccess in Cloud Template creates a file with user credentials in the CD-ROM unit of the VM.

    Impacts: This known issue impacts vRealize Automation 8.10.2 and later.

    Workaround:

    • Use any key based authentication method: publicPrivateKey or generatedPublicPrivatekey for remoteAccess in Cloud Template

    • Automatically change the password on first logon: configure cloudbase-init to force the user to change the password at next logon, by adding to cloudbase-init.conf: first_logon_behaviour=always.Learn More

    • Manually change the password on first logon

Resolved Issues

  • Logs stop getting compressed after 6 months uptime

    After an extended period of uptime, vRA logs might stop getting compressed. Old logs will keep getting deleted, but the log rotation might not get compressed. This can cause the log bundle to get too large to collect. This issue has been fixed in 8.11.2, and a KB article outlining the fix can be found here https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/91113.

  • Change Project is greyed out for Deployments of Onboarded VMs that were migrated from 7.6

    When migrating a deployment that includes machines and attached disks, the origin of the disks (including boot, attached, and inline disks) is updated to "ONBOARDED" during the subsequent resource sync cycle. This is incorrect, as the origin should remain as "MIGRATED".

    This causes the "Change Project Day 2" action to be greyed out. The "Change Project Day2" operation should only be greyed out for hybrid deployments with resources from different origins. The bug was introduced in the 8.10.0 release and will persist until version 8.11.1.

    The bug fix is included in version 8.11.2 onwards. This change will address all affected disks without impacting newly created ones.

  • Deprecate NodeJS 14 Polyglot Runtime

    Starting this release, vRealize Orchestrator Polyglot supports NodeJS 18.14.2 runtime. The old NodeJS 14 runtime is now deprecated and will be removed when that version reaches EOL (https://github.com/nodejs/release#release-schedule)

    It is recommended to review and run the scripts with NodeJS 18.14.2 runtime.

  • Tags on Azure cloud zone and compute deleted after upgrade

    When upgrading to vRealize Automation 8.11.0, some users noticed that tags on Azure availability zone computes were no longer available. 

  • Deprecate an identity service endpoint in vRealize Automation

    The GET /am/api/auth/token-public-key endpoint is deprecated and instead GET /.well-known/openid-configuration endpoint is introduced in this release that returns OpenID configuration information.

    To prevent any scripts from breaking once the deprecated endpoint is removed after a few releases, update Any automation that uses GET /am/api/auth/token-public-key endpoint  to get the Identity service's public key to use GET /.well-known/openid-configuration endpoint and then use the URL contained in the "jwks_uri" element in order to achieve the same.

    For more information on this endpoint, refer to: https://developer.vmware.com/docs/17860//GUID-6561CDF8-A174-498D-9FBD-F9BD89EF7660.html and to access all Swagger specifications from a single landing page, go to https://<vRA-FQDN>/automation-ui/api-docs where vRA-FQDN is the FQDN of your vRealize Automation appliance.

  • Secure strings in Composite types inside a configuration element get lost after pulling the remote git repo

    Pulling the remote git repository causes the Configurations that contain CompositeTypes with secure strings to become invalid and lose the secure string value.

  • SaltStack Config - "Disconnected" Salt Masters are ranked higher in the report

    Any Salt Masters that are disconnected show up higher in the report when both Present and Disconnected filters are enabled. While disconnected masters are important information, the default focus should be on the masters that are active and present. 

February 2023/ vRA 8.11.1 What's New

  • SaltStack Day2 Action Enhancements

    You can now configure  "additionalAuthParams", "additionalMinionParams", and "pillarEnvironment" properties to SaltStack Day-2 action "Attach SaltStack Resource" .

  • vRealize Automation Terraform Service and accompanying Terraform provider now supports Terraform 1.0

    The vRealize Automation Terraform Service and accompanying Terraform provider now supports Terraform 1.0.  This will allow our vRA customers the ability to consume Terraform 1.0 and provide the latest support for it.

  • Customized notifications in Service Broker

    You can now customize the look and feel of notification emails sent out from VMware vRealize Automation Service Broker. The email header and footer can be standardized to your organization's branding requirements across all notification templates. For each notification scenario, you can now edit the email's body text and utilize dynamic attributes of deployments in the text. Learn more.

  • Capacity management enhancements - Storage allocation limits

    You can now specify a maximum storage allocation at the datastore level for all managed Disks. During provisioning, these properties are checked for placements to prevent storage overallocation.

    This is controlled by a feature toggle PREVENT_COMPUTE_STORAGE_OVERALLOCATION that is turned off by default.

  • Deprecation of an identity service endpoint in vRealize Automation

    Starting with this release, the POST /am/idp/auth/login endpoint is being deprecated; however, the POST /csp/gateway/am/api/login endpoint performs the same operation.

    For more information on this endpoint, refer to the API Programming Guide . To access all Swagger specifications from a single landing page, go to https://<vRA-FQDN>/automation-ui/api-docs where vRA-FQDN is the FQDN of your vRealize Automation appliance.

    To prevent any scripts from breaking once the deprecated endpoint is removed after a few releases, perform this update:

    • Any automation that uses POST /am/idp/auth/login endpoint will have to be reworked to use the POST /csp/gateway/am/api/login endpoint.

  • Provision GCP TCP Load Balancers and perform Day 2 actions

    You can now provision Google Compute Engine TCP Load Balancers, modify their properties, and setup health checks for the load balancers from vRealize Automation.

  • Provision GCP storage bucket resources

    vRealize Automation now supports GCP storage buckets that allow users to easily create and manage their storage buckets.  This includes the creation of multi-regional/dual-regional buckets, restricted public access, and encryption support.

Resolved Issues

  • Restore support for vRA Console to establish VMRC connections

    vRA 8.11.1 restored the way VM Remote Console (VMRC) works as in pre-vRA 8.10.2 versions. Now, both ticket types (Mks & WebMks) are supported again and it is possible to leverage the vRA Console Proxy when establishing VMRC connections with Mks tickets. It is no longer required to open ESXi port 443 to public.  

     Note: Since vCenter version 8.0 and newer only supports WebMks tickets, the only option when working with vRA VMRC is to use WebMks tickets. As a result, the Console Proxy cannot be used for VMRC functionality with vCenter 8.0 version. 

  • Enhance Identity service (on-prem) endpoint to have more restrictive access

    Some endpoints from vRealize Automation Identity API can now be accessed only by users with org owner role. It is recommended to review if the user accessing those endpoints has org owner role.

    Please reach out to VMware support for more information.

  • vRealize Orchestrator - StackOverFlowError during garbage collection of the Version History repository

    The nightly garbage collection process of the Version History repository would fail due to a StackOverFlowError and would leave the Version History repository in a non-functional state.

  • Pushing an object using the Version button results in all local changes being pushed

     Whenever you have an integrated active remote Git repository and you attempt to push either a single content object using the Version button, or a subset of your available Local changes, more than the expected number of selected items could be pushed to the remote Git repository. This issue would occur after a Remote Branch change, or after switching between active repositories.

  • When deployments with missing resources are deleted, those resources are still displayed as missing

    When deployments with all missing resources are deleted, those resources are orphaned and still show in the UI as missing. These orphaned resources can no longer be removed from vRealize Automation. 

  • External vRealize Orchestrator fail to start after change of vRealize Automation certificate

    In vRO server version 8.10.2, if the system property com.vmware.o11n.certPathValidator is enabled with vRO is configured to use an external vRA as authentication provider, and vRA certificates are replaced with a certificate from the same Certificate Authority, then vRO UI throws an 404 error in the browser.

    For more info on this property, refer to: Enabling the Certificate Path Validation Algorithm

  • Composite types are not visible as input parameters when adding new input type in a workflow or day 2 actions

    CompositeTypes that are declared only as part of Arrays ( e.g. Array/CompositeType(name:string,grade:number):Student ) will now be indexed and available for use in the type selectors across browser tabs and instances.

API Documentation and Versioning

Notice: Release Notes for previous releases are archived yearly:

API documentation is available with the product. To access all Swagger documents from a single landing page, go to:

  • https://www.mgmt.cloud.vmware.com/automation-ui/api-docs/ for vRealize Automation Cloud.

  • https://<appliance.domain.com>/automation-ui/api-docs for vRealize Automation 8.x, where appliance.domain.com is your vRealize Automation appliance.

Before using the API, consider the latest API updates and changes for this release, and note any changes to the API services that you use. If you have not locked your API using the apiVersion variable before, you might encounter a change in an API response. Any API updates and changes are provided in the What's New section for each release.

For unlocked APIs, the default behavior varies depending upon the API.

  • For Cloud Assembly IaaS APIs, all requests which are executed without the apiVersion parameter will be redirected to the first version which is 2019-01-15. This redirect will allow every user who did not previously specify the apiVersion parameter to transition smoothly to the latest version without experiencing breaking changes.

    NOTE: For the Cloud Assembly IaaS APIs, the latest version is apiVersion=2021-07-15. If left unlocked, IaaS API requests will be redirected to the first version which is 2019-01-15. The first version is deprecated and will be supported for 24 months. To ensure a smooth transition to the new version, lock your IaaS API requests with the apiVersion parameter assigned to 2021-07-15.

  • For other APIs, your API requests will default to the latest version. If you select one of the earlier version dates listed for the Swagger spec, the API behavior will reflect APIs that were in effect as of that date and any date until the next most recent version date. APIs are not versioned for every vRealize Automation release and not all APIs support the apiVersion parameter.

For more information about using the apiVersion parameter, see the Programming Guides listed in vRealize Automation APIs and CLI.

March 2023 / vRA 8.11.2

There are no API changes for this release.

February 2023 / vRA 8.11.1

There are no API changes for this release.

check-circle-line exclamation-circle-line close-line
Scroll to top icon