VMware Cloud Well-Architected Framework: Build Pillar - Automation - Google Cloud VMware Engine

Automation for Google Cloud VMware Engine

Automating infrastructure operations bring consistency across multiple environments, reduction of human errors, and decreased time spent on day-to-day tasks.

Organizations can consume Google Cloud VMware Engine at a faster rate and accelerate their cloud adoption by leveraging automation of infrastructure and workloads.

Operations on Google Cloud VMware Engine Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) can be automated by leveraging vCenter and NSX automation tools, such as PowerCLI and APIs. For more information, please refer to the official VMware documentation on vCenter and NSX APIs.

Eventually, Google Cloud VMware Engine APIs will be available for public consumption as well. Before choosing a specific tool to automate operations on Google Cloud VMware Engine, it is important to assess automation tools that may be already being used in other parts of the organizations as well as level of effort required for maintenance of the automation scripts.

To automate the deployment and day 2 operations of workloads that reside in Google Cloud VMware Engine, organizations can leverage VMware Aria Automation.

• To start using VMware Aria Automation with Google Cloud VMware Engine, vCenter and NSX-T cloud accounts must be created within VMware Aria Automation with appropriate authentication.
• VMware Aria Automation templates can be created to deploy workloads to Google Cloud VMware Engine.
•  In conjunction with VMware Aria Automation, other VMware Aria offerings such as Service Broker and CI/CD Pipeline are also available to provide a self-service environment for the end users and enable continuous integration and delivery for application developers.
• VMware Aria Automation can also perform day 2 actions and lifecycle operations on the workloads, such as increasing memory or deleting old snapshots.
• Security components, such as NSX-T distributed firewall rules and security groups, can be created using VMware Aria Automation templates as well to maintain consistent security posture on workloads across multiple clouds, including Google Cloud VMware Engine.