This is a simple post to introduce the VMware vRealize Suite for the first time user as a quick overview. This is a short version of product Overview and the figures in this post are from VMware public documents. The full documents are under below link:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Suite/index.html

VMware vRealize Suite is a management platform for VMware and cloud environments. To fully unlock the power of vRealize suite, it worth to understand each of the components and its functions. In general, vRealize Suite is composed by below five major components. Depends on the vRealize Suite edition, it may include only a few components or all of them.

 

• vRealize Automation (vRA) – vRealize automation provides an IaaS, Software, and XaaS platform to automate the infrastructure, service and “X” delivering. In most of the user cases, the automation IaaS is used to rapidly model and provision servers and/or desktops across virtual and physical, private and public, or hybrid cloud infrastructures. In addition, XaaS service is to provide customer desired service with customized workflow and scripting. Container provisioning is also supported in vRA platform.

 

• vRealize Operations (vRO) – Self-driving Operations from applications to infrastructure, using AI / machine learning (ML) based performance and capacity optimization. In most of the user cases, vRO is built to provide monitoring and planning purposes. vRO will collect VMware environment information and statistics and can provide customized report and dashboard.

 

• vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) – Real-time log management and log analysis. vRLI can be deployed alone as a log management and analysis platform for VMware.

 

• vRealize Business for Cloud (vRB) – Automated costing, usage metering, and service pricing of cloud infrastructure. This is to provide a business (cost) view of the VMware and cloud environment.

 

• vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager – Automated installation, configuration, upgrade, patch, drift remediation, health, and content management of vRealize products.

 

You don’t need to install the components and can only install the component to suit your requirements. For example, install vRealize Operation to perform vSphere environment monitoring and planning.

For sure, some of the vRealize Suite components could be integrated with each other. For example, vRealize Automation could use vRealize Operation manager to pick the suitable host for deployment based on the host utilization.

In real world, a few typical deployment scenarios could be as below:

• If monitoring and planning is the only requirement – Deploy vRealize Operations;
• If automated VM/Service provisioning is required – Deploy vRealize Automation and Orchestration; (It is noted that an internal Orchestration has been integrated in vRealize Automation appliance.)
• If a vSphere log management and Analysis tool required – Deploy vRealize Log Insight;
• Deploy all components for large environment needs all these functions; and
• (Option) deploy vRealize suite Life Cycle Manager to vRealize solution upgrade and maintenance.