“Manual vSphere template deployment forces cloud administrators to perform 40 click-through wizard steps per VM. vRealize Automation Cloud Templates reduce this to a single API payload.”

While scaling private cloud infrastructure at NTT Data, tenant onboarding bottlenecks occurred because systems engineers manually configured vSphere storage policies and network adapters for every new application pod.

Architecture: Declarative vRA 8.2 Cloud Templates

We engineered modular vRealize Automation (vRA 8.2) Cloud Templates using declarative YAML.

• Dynamic Network Binding: Dynamically binds VM network adapters to NSX-T Logical Switches using environment inputs (env: production).
• Custom Storage Flavor Sizing: Provisions vSAN Storage Policies (RAID-1 vs RAID-5) automatically based on the user’s selected T-Shirt size profile.

[!NOTE] Integrate vRA Cloud Templates with ABX (Action Based Extensibility) Python scripts to trigger dynamic IP reservation in Infoblox or iTop prior to VM creation.

# # vRA 8.2 Cloud Template YAML Snippet for Multi-Tier App Pod
formatVersion: 1
inputs:
  flavor:
    type: string
    title: Instance Sizing
    enum:
      - small
      - medium
      - large
resources:
  Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1:
    type: Cloud.vSphere.Machine
    properties:
      image: Ubuntu-20.04-Template
      flavor: '${input.flavor}'
      networks:
        - network: '${resource.Cloud_NSX_Network_1.id}'
  Cloud_NSX_Network_1:
    type: Cloud.NSX.Network
    properties:
      networkType: routed

The Verdict

Key Takeaway

Standardize Private Cloud Provisioning with Declarative vRA Cloud Templates.

Deploying vRealize Automation (vRA 8.2) blueprints accelerates tenant environment delivery from 10 business days to under 15 minutes.