Delivering an Infrastructure Service

The ability to deliver Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) represents the technological and organizational transformation from traditional data center operations to cloud. You can model and provision VMs and services across private, public, or hybrid cloud infrastructure.

In the SDDC, provider groups or organizations can isolate and abstract resources in the form of infrastructure and application services, and make them available to tenant groups or organizations.

The cloud management layer delivers a self-service user portal that lowers administrative overhead through the use of policies to provision infrastructure services. Administrators use policies to control the consumption of services in a detailed and flexible fashion. Approval requirements can be part of each service.

You can build the infrastructure service by using several components.

Table 1. Infrastructure Service Components

Infrastructure Service Section	Design Components
vRealize Automation virtual appliance	vRealize Automation Portal Web server or App server vRealize Automation vPostgreSQL database
vRealize Automation IaaS	vRealize Automation IaaS Web server vRealize Automation IaaS Manager services
Distributed execution manager	vRealize Automation distributed execution managers consist of DEM Orchestrator instances and DEM Worker instances.
Integration	vRealize Automation Agent machines
Cost management	vRealize Business for Cloud
Provisioning infrastructure	vSphere environment vRealize Orchestrator environment Other supported physical, virtual, or cloud environment
Supporting infrastructure	Microsoft SQL database environment LDAP or Active Directory environment SMTP and email environment

An infrastructure service is deployed in multiple stages.

Figure 1. Stages of an IaaS Deployment

For an in-depth discussion of key IaaS concepts, see the vRealize Automation information about Infrastructure as a Service.

Self-Service Portal

vRealize Automation provides a secure portal where authorized administrators, developers, or business users can request new IT services.

Infrastructure Components

To deploy vRealize Automation, you configure some VMware products such as vSphere and vCloud Air, and you configure vRealize Automation components such as physical machine endpoints, fabric groups, and blueprints.

Services and Tenants

The service catalog provides a unified self-service portal for consuming IT services. Users can browse the catalog to request items, track their requests, and manage their provisioned items.

Cost Management

Solutions that integrate with vRealize Automation, such as vRealize Business for Cloud, support cost exploration and management.