VMware Aria Automation: Advanced Topics [V8.14]

This four-day course is a follow-on to the VMware Aria Automation: Install, Configure, Manage course. During this course, you will take a deeper dive into advanced topics using features of VMware Aria Automation such as deploying user systems and interfacing Aria Automation with other platforms. You will also learn how to deploy a cluster environment using VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle and interface with, and use, vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes. This course makes heavy use of hands-on labs.

Audience

Experienced system administrators and system integrators responsible for using VMware Aria Automation in advanced configurations in enterprise deployments.

Prerequisites

This course requires completion of the following courses:

• VMware Aria Automation: Install, Configure, Manage [v8.10]

Objectives

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Describe and configure VMware Aria Automation in a clustered enterprise deployment using with VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle
• Scale out VMware Identity Manager to support High Availability
• Use external Certificate Authorities to configure security certificates in VMware Aria Automation
• Create YAML templates to configure VMware Aria Automation using cloudConfig
• Use VMware Aria Automation advanced templates to deploy a 2-tier Database-Server using MySQL and phpMyAdmin
• Use Advanced VMware NSX networking features including NAT, routed networks, load balancers, security groups, and tags
• Integrate and use NSX Advanced Load Balancer with VMware Aria Automation and VMware NSX
• Create and use Aria Automation Pipelines to deploy software and connect to Kuberenetes
• Create and use Ansible playbooks that integrate with VMware Aria Automation
• Integrate Aria Automation with Terraform
• Integrate Aria Automation with GitLab
• Create Orchestrator Workflows and ABX Actions that interface with other systems and use REST calls
• Configure and use Orchestrator Workflows and ABX actions to create day-2 actions and interface with Powershell scripts
• Use Aria Automation to deploy minions and deploy software

Product Alignment

• VMware vSphere™ 7.0.3, VMware vSphere™ 8.0.1
• VMware Aria Automation™ 8.13
• VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle™ 8.13
• VMware Aria Automation Config™ 8.13
• VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator™ 8.13
• VMware vSphere With Tanzu 8.0 update 2
• VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (AVI) 22.1.5

Course Outline

1 Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 VMware Aria Automation Clustered Deployment

• Using Aria Suite Lifecycle in a clustered deployment
• Configure External Certificates
• Configure VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer
• Install VMware Aria Automation using Clustered Deployment
• Scale out VMware Identity Manager to support High Availability

3 Advanced VMware Aria Automation Templates

• Use advanced YAML and cloudConfig to deploy a functioning 2-tier application with a phpMyAdmin front end server and a MySQL database server
• Use cloudConfig and cloug-init
• Use advanced YAML techniques to create configuration files and add users to deployed virtual machines

4 Advanced Networking

• Use VMware NSX advanced features in VMware Aria Automation templates
• Interfacing to IPAMs
• Use VMware NSX NAT in VMware Aria Automation templates
• Use VMware NSX Routed Networks
• Use VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer
• Use VMware NSX Security Groups

5 Advanced Orchestrator Workflows

• Create Day-2 Actions with Orchestrator workflows
• Use Orchestrator to Add computer objects to Active Directory when VMware Aria Automation deploys templates
• Create VMware Aria Automation Custom Resources
• Create VMware Aria Automation Resource Actions
• Use VMware Aria Automation with Orchestrator to perform REST calls

6 Using ABX Actions

• Use ABX to create day-2 Actions
• Create ABX Action-Flows
• Use ABX to make REST calls

7 Kubernetes Integration

• Describe vSphere With Tanzu
• Create a Supervisor Cluster
• Create a Supervisor Namespace
• Create Cluster Plans
• Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster from Aria Automation
• Manage Kubernetes Tanzu clusters from Aria Automation
• Execute YAML code and deploy software in a managed Tanzu Kubernetes cluster
• Connect to an existing generic Kubernetes cluster
• Create Kubernetes namespaces from Aria Automation
• Interface Aria Automation to other Kubernetes systems

8 Aria Automation Pipelines

• Create and use CI/CD pipelines
• Use the Pipeline user interface
• Add states and tasks to a pipeline
• Integrate code from a pipeline with Gitlab
• Use an Aria Automation pipeline to install software
• Use an Aria Automation Pipeline to Create a Kubernetes Namespace and a Deployment

9 Aria Automation and Configuration Management

• Describe Ansible, Puppet, and Terraform
• Integrate Ansible with VMware Aria Automation
• Integrate Terraform with VMware Aria Automation
• Call Terraform from VMware Aria Automation
• Use Terraform to manage VMware Aria Automation
• Deploy an Aria Automation Config minion
• Install software on an Aria Automation Config minion
• Create and manage files on a Linux system with Aria Automation Config