Studying for the VCP-CMA 2020 Certification: Update

I’ve just finished the 8 x Cloud Management Platform VMware Hands On Labs as below -

HOL-2021-01-CMP - vRealize Automation - Getting Started
HOL-2006-01-CMP - vRealize Suite - Making Private Cloud Easy
HOL-2021-91-ISM - vRealize Automation 8 - What’s New - Lightning Lab
HOL-2021-02-CMP - vRealize Automation - Advanced Topics
HOL-2021-04-CMP - vRealize Orchestrator - Getting Started
HOL-2006-02-CMP - vRealize Suite - Integrated Troubleshooting
HOL-2006-03-CMP - vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager
HOL-2021-03-CMP - vRealize Automation - Advanced Extensibility

- and they are all well worth your time doing. The only one I might skip in hindsight is HOL-2021-91-ISM, since the VCP-CMA 2020 is focused on VMware vRealize Automation 7.6.

Image: Education Services > Certification > VCP-CMA 2020 (the hyperlink link still says 2019)

What Next?

Now the VMware website has been updated with the VCP-CMA 2020 -
- I know my path is to take the Professional VMware vRealize Automation 7.6 exam once I’ve acquired enough knowledge and experience.

Now to “...item writers use the following references for information when writing exam questions. It is recommended that you study the reference content...” (from):

Revisiting the labs/other hands-on.

There is also a VMware Cloud Management YouTube channel with content worth watching:

No FlexPod design guides that appear to include vRealize, but worth checking out these NetApp Verified Designs that do (skip the bits you’re not interested in):

Notes from the 8 x Cloud Management Platform VMware Hands on Labs

Some notes I recorded whilst doing the labs.

VMware vRealize Automation Documentation

VMware vRealize Automation uses two distinct types of administrator accounts to divide up the administrative tasks required to manage the infrastructure endpoints, compute resource reservations, users, groups, and policies that need to be put in place. These two accounts are known as the IaaS Administrator and the Tenant Administrator.

The Tenant Administrator Portal includes two new tabs.
1. Administration - This tab contains all-of the administrative functions that are available to you as the Tenant Administrator.
2. Infrastructure - Allows you to review recent events that have occurred on your tenant's infrastructure.

DEM = Distributed Execution Manager

vSphere SPBM (Storage Policy-Based Management Framework)

vRealize Automation 8.0 consists of the following components:
- Cloud Assembly
- Service Broker
- Code Stream
- Orchestrator

vRealize Automation also requires vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager and VMware Identity Manager for installation, configuration, post-install management, and authentication.

There are two different types of Component Profiles:
- Image
- Size

Harbor in GitHub:

VMware Solutions Exchange:
Note: vRealize Orchestrator plugins are .VMOAPP files (can also be installed as .DAR files)

vRealize Orchestrator Control Center is the main interface to configure and troubleshoot vRealize Orchestrator.

Configure Component Profile Size Settings for Catalog Deployments

Configure Component Profile Image Settings for Catalog Deployments

There are some limitations to component profiles with which you should familiarize yourself:
- If you try to resize the virtual machine to a size greater than the largest setting, it will fail.
- Additionally, if you edit the component profile Size ValueSets, the changes will retroactively work on any already-deployed virtual machines.

Image: Automated Lifecycle Management and Operations (Day 0 to Day 2)

VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager comes free with VMware vRealize Suite in all three editions.  The vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager automates installation, configuration, upgrade, patch, configuration management, drift remediation and validate the health status of services from within a single pane of glass, thereby freeing IT Managers/Cloud admin resources to focus on business-critical initiatives, while improving time to value (TTV), reliability and consistency.

Step 1) Deploy vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager appliance and complete initial configuration.
Step 2) Deploy other VMware Products*

*Products = vRealize Network Insight, vRealize Business for Cloud, vRealize Log Insight, vRealize Operations, vRealize Automation

Image: VMware Products deployable from vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager

vRealize Automation 7 has the following options for extending functionality beyond simple virtual machine deployment:
- Event Broker
- XaaS blueprints and actions

Image (1/2): vRealize Automation + Event Broker Service & Xaas Service Designer - pluggable framework to vRO

Image (2/2): vRealize Automation + Event Broker Service & Xaas Service Designer - pluggable framework to vRO

vRealize CloudClient is a command-line utility that provides verb-based access with a unified interface across vRealize Automation APIs:

Image: VMware vRealize CloudClient 4.7.0

Another resource for downloading Blueprints is VMWARE {code}.  The code site allows community members to post and share vRealize Automation Blueprints as well as workflows and other content for VMware solutions: https://code.vmware.com

The ITSM Plug-in 7.6 is the latest release for those looking to extend ServiceNow ITSM with Multi-Cloud Automation with Governance

VMware vRealize Automation integration with ServiceNow (vRA ITSM Plugin)

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