VMware has recently released an updated version of the vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) which will be renamed to vRealize Automation (vRA) in the next (6.2) release so i’ll call it vRA from now on.
Two things caught my attention and especially one which i have been looking for a long time now.
- There is no longer a single point of failure for the identity component. Since vRA 6.1 you can now use vCenter Single Sign On in an active-passive configuration. The both vCenter SSO instances does not hold session information meaning a failover can cause service interruption but for me as an architect this is good step forward in terms of availability. Hopefully automatic failover will be enabled in the next release. When required we can now include a logical overview according to the following:
See the Using VMware® vCenter SSO 5.5 with VMware vCloud Automation Center 6.1 for setting up vCenter SSO in a highly available configuration for vRA. - PostgreSQL is still the required database for the vRA virtual appliance and it is still included in the vRA virtual appliance. However, there is an option to separate the vRA virtual appliance portal components and the vRA virtual appliance PostgreSQL components if you want. The VMware KB 2083563 describes how to setup the vPostgres replication in the vRA virtual appliance.
Below is a complete what’s new summary:
- vCenter 5.5 Single-Sign-On active-passive clustering
- Internal and external vPostgres active-passive clustering
- External vCloud Orchestrator clustering
- Updated load balancer recommendations
- Updated diagrams
You can download the vCloud Automation Center 6.1 reference architecture here.
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