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Containers Overview on page 11
You can use containers to gain access to additional instrumentation for developing and deploying
applications in vRealize Automation.
Infrastructure as a Service Overview
With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), you can rapidly model and provision servers and desktops across
virtual and physical, private and public, or hybrid cloud infrastructures.
Modeling is accomplished by creating a machine blueprint, which is a specication for a machine.
Blueprints are published as catalog items in the common service catalog, and are available for reuse as
components inside of application blueprints. When an entitled user requests a machine based on one of
these blueprints, IaaS provisions the machine.
With IaaS, you can manage the machine life cycle from a user request and administrative approval through
decommissioning and resource reclamation. Built-in conguration and extensibility features also make IaaS
a highly exible means of customizing machine congurations and integrating machine provisioning and
management with other enterprise-critical systems such as load balancers, conguration management
databases (CMDBs), ticketing systems, IP address management systems, or Domain Name System (DNS)
servers.
Software Components Overview
Software components automate the installation, conguration, and life cycle management of middleware
and application deployments in dynamic cloud environments. Applications can range from simple Web
applications to complex and even packaged applications.
By using a congurable scriptable engine, software architects fully control how middleware and application
deployment components are installed, congured, updated, and uninstalled on machines. Through the use
of Software properties, software architects can require or allow blueprint architects and end-users to specify
conguration elements such as environment variables. For repeated deployments, these blueprints
standardize the structure of the application, including machine blueprints, software components,
dependencies, and congurations, but can allow environment variables and property binding to be
recongured if necessary.
Deploying Any Application and Middleware Service
You can deploy Software components on Windows or Linux operating systems on vSphere,
vCloud Director, vCloud Air, and Amazon AWS machines.
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IaaS architects create reusable machine blueprints based on templates, snapshots, or Amazon machine
images that contain the guest agent and Software bootstrap agent to support Software components.
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Software architects create reusable software components that specify exactly how the software is
installed, congured, updated during deployment scale operations, and uninstalled on machines.
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Software architects, IaaS architects, and application architects use a graphical interface to model
application deployment topologies. Architects recongure Software properties and bindings as
required by the software architect, and publish application blueprints that combine Software
components and machine blueprints.
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Catalog administrators add the published blueprints to a catalog service, and entitle users to request the
catalog item.
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Entitled users request the catalog item and provide any conguration values designed to be editable.
vRealize Automation deploys the requested application, provisioning any machine(s), networking and
security components, and Software component(s) dened in the application blueprint.
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Entitled users request the scale in or scale out actions to adjust their deployments to changing workload
demands. vRealize Automation installs or uninstalls Software components on machines for scale, and
runs update scripts for dependent Software components.
Foundations and Concepts
VMware, Inc. 9