Pass Your VMware 2V0-31.21 Exam Easy!

VMware 2V0-31.21 (Professional VMware vRealize Automation 8.3) exam dumps vce, practice test questions, study guide & video training course to study and pass quickly and easily. VMware 2V0-31.21 Professional VMware vRealize Automation 8.3 exam dumps & practice test questions and answers. You need avanset vce exam simulator in order to study the VMware 2V0-31.21 certification exam dumps & VMware 2V0-31.21 practice test questions in vce format.

Decoding the 2V0-31.21 Exam: Your Path to vRealize Automation Expertise

The 2V0-31.21 exam, leading to the VMware Certified Professional - Cloud Management and Automation (VCP-CMA) certification, is a critical benchmark for IT professionals specializing in cloud automation. This exam validates the skills required to successfully install, configure, and manage VMware vRealize Automation 8.3. It is designed for cloud administrators and engineers who are responsible for implementing a private or multi-cloud infrastructure that offers self-service capabilities, robust governance, and automated workload delivery. Passing this exam demonstrates a deep understanding of modern infrastructure-as-code principles and the ability to leverage the vRealize suite to its full potential.

Achieving the certification associated with the 2V0-31.21 exam signifies your expertise in one of the industry's leading cloud management platforms. In today's hybrid and multi-cloud world, organizations are seeking to streamline their IT operations, accelerate service delivery, and maintain control over their diverse environments. vRealize Automation is a key enabler of these goals, and professionals who can effectively deploy and manage it are in high demand. This certification formally recognizes your ability to architect and administer a sophisticated automation solution, enhancing your professional credibility and career opportunities.

This five-part series will serve as a comprehensive guide to the topics covered in the 2V0-31.21 exam. We will deconstruct the core components of vRealize Automation 8.3, from its fundamental architecture to the intricacies of blueprinting, extensibility, and troubleshooting. Each part is designed to build upon the last, providing a structured and logical path to mastering the concepts. Whether you are just beginning your journey with vRealize Automation or are a seasoned administrator looking to validate your skills, this series will provide the detailed insights you need to prepare for the exam with confidence.

Our exploration will align with the official exam blueprint, ensuring that we cover all the necessary domains. We will delve into the technical details of configuring cloud accounts, building governance policies through projects, designing cloud-agnostic blueprints, and extending the platform's capabilities with vRealize Orchestrator and Action Based Extensibility. By the end of this series, you will have a solid understanding of the platform and be well-prepared to tackle the challenges of the 2V0-31.21 exam.

The Evolution of vRealize Automation: From 7.x to 8.3

To fully appreciate the concepts tested in the 2V0-31.21 exam, it is essential to understand the profound architectural evolution that vRealize Automation underwent starting with version 8.0. The previous major version, vRealize Automation 7.x, was built on a Windows-based architecture with an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) web server, Manager Service, and DEMs (Distributed Execution Managers). While powerful, this architecture was complex to deploy and manage. The shift to the 8.x platform represents a complete modernization of the product.

vRealize Automation 8.3, the version relevant to the 2V0-31.21 exam, is built on a completely new foundation. It is delivered as a single virtual appliance running on VMware's Photon OS, a lightweight, Linux-based operating system optimized for cloud environments. The monolithic services of the past have been replaced by a modern, containerized, microservices-based architecture. This new architecture is managed by Kubernetes, the industry-standard container orchestration platform. This shift brings significant benefits in terms of ease of deployment, scalability, and resilience.

This architectural change is not just a technical footnote; it fundamentally changes how the product is installed, configured, and managed. Concepts from vRA 7.x, such as Business Groups and Reservations, have been replaced by new constructs like Projects and Cloud Zones. The property dictionary and vRO-based event broker subscriptions have been succeeded by cloud-agnostic blueprints and a more flexible extensibility model. Understanding these differences is crucial, as the 2V0-31.21 exam is focused exclusively on the modern 8.3 architecture.

For anyone with experience in older versions of the product, it is important to approach the 2V0-31.21 exam with a fresh perspective. While the high-level goals of providing self-service and governance remain the same, the underlying technology and the administrative procedures have been completely reimagined. This new architecture is more aligned with modern DevOps practices and provides a more agile and flexible platform for cloud automation, which is the core focus of the certification.

vRealize Automation 8.3 Architecture Deep Dive

The architecture of vRealize Automation 8.3 is a central topic for the 2V0-31.21 exam. As mentioned, the platform runs as a virtual appliance and is built on a foundation of containers and microservices orchestrated by Kubernetes. This design ensures that the individual services that make up the platform can be scaled, updated, and managed independently, which provides a high degree of resilience. If one microservice fails, Kubernetes can automatically restart it without bringing down the entire platform.

The core services are deployed as containers running within the appliance. These services include Automation Assembler, which is the blueprinting and provisioning engine; Service Broker, which provides the self-service catalog; Code Stream, for CI/CD and release automation; and vRealize Orchestrator, for extensibility and custom workflow execution. Each of these services is made up of its own set of microservices. For example, the Automation Assembler service includes microservices for managing blueprints, deployments, and cloud accounts.

This complex environment of containers and services is managed by VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM). While a deep knowledge of vRSLCM is part of a separate certification track, the 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to understand its role in the deployment and lifecycle management of vRealize Automation. vRSLCM is used to install the vRA appliance, manage its configuration, apply patches and upgrades, and manage its integration with other vRealize products.

Understanding this layered architecture is key. At the bottom, you have the Photon OS virtual appliance. On top of that runs the Kubernetes container orchestration layer. Within Kubernetes, you have the various pods running the containers for each of the core microservices. Finally, these services are presented to the user through a unified user interface. The 2V0-31.21 exam will test your understanding of these components and how they interact to deliver the platform's automation and governance capabilities.

Understanding the vRealize Easy Installer

The deployment of the vRealize Automation appliance and its related components is a foundational task that is covered in the 2V0-31.21 exam. To simplify this process, VMware provides a tool called the vRealize Easy Installer. This is a downloadable ISO file that contains the installation wizards for vRealize Automation, vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM), and Workspace ONE Access (formerly known as VMware Identity Manager). The installer provides a streamlined, GUI-based workflow for deploying these products in a new environment.

The Easy Installer is designed to be run from a Windows, Linux, or Mac client machine. When you launch the wizard, it guides you through the process of providing all the necessary information to deploy the appliances into your vCenter Server environment. This includes details about the vCenter connection, networking information (IP addresses, gateways, DNS), and the passwords for the various administrative accounts. The installer validates this information before proceeding with the deployment.

The 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to be familiar with the different deployment options available. The Easy Installer can deploy a standard, single-node instance of vRealize Automation, which is suitable for proof-of-concept or small-scale environments. For production environments, it can deploy a clustered, three-node configuration. This clustered deployment provides high availability for the vRA platform, with the underlying Kubernetes infrastructure managing the distribution and resilience of the services across the three appliance nodes.

It is also important to understand that the Easy Installer handles the deployment of Workspace ONE Access, which provides the identity and access management for the vRealize suite. It also gives you the option to deploy a new vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager appliance or to use an existing one. A clear understanding of the purpose of the Easy Installer and the step-by-step workflow it provides is a critical starting point for mastering the installation and setup domain of the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Identity and Access Management with Workspace ONE Access

Robust identity and access management is the cornerstone of a secure and well-governed cloud platform. For the 2V0-31.21 exam, you must have a solid understanding of the role that Workspace ONE Access (formerly VMware Identity Manager or vIDM) plays in the vRealize Automation architecture. Workspace ONE Access is the central authentication and authorization service for the entire vRealize suite. It provides single sign-on (SSO) capabilities and a unified place to manage users, groups, and role-based access control.

When you deploy vRealize Automation, it is configured to use an instance of Workspace ONE Access as its identity provider. This can be a new instance deployed by the Easy Installer or an existing external instance. The primary function of this integration is to handle user authentication. Workspace ONE Access can be configured to manage a local directory of users, but in most enterprise environments, it is connected to one or more upstream Active Directory or LDAP directories. This allows users to log in to vRealize Automation using their existing corporate credentials.

Once a user is authenticated, Workspace ONE Access is also responsible for authorization. This is managed by assigning users or groups to specific service roles within the vRealize Automation application. These roles grant the necessary permissions to perform tasks within the different services. For example, a user might be assigned the 'Service Broker Administrator' role, which gives them full control over the service catalog, while another user might have the 'Automation Assembler User' role, allowing them to create and deploy blueprints.

The 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to be familiar with these standard roles and how to assign them to users and groups within the Workspace ONE Access interface. You should also understand how to create custom roles if the out-of-the-box roles are not sufficient. A proper configuration of identity and access management is a critical first step in setting up a secure, multi-tenant cloud environment, making this a vital topic for the exam.

Navigating the Core Services: Service Broker and Automation Assembler

vRealize Automation 8.3 is composed of several core services, but the two that you will interact with most frequently are Service Broker and Automation Assembler. The 2V0-31.21 exam requires a deep understanding of the purpose of each of these services and how they work together. They represent the two primary facets of the platform: the consumption experience and the creation experience.

Automation Assembler is the engine room of the platform. It is where cloud administrators and blueprint developers design and build the automation content. This service provides the design canvas and YAML editor for creating blueprints, which are the declarative models of the infrastructure and applications you want to deploy. Automation Assembler is also where you configure the connections to your public and private cloud endpoints (Cloud Accounts) and define the governance constructs like Cloud Zones and Projects. It is the administrative interface for building and managing the underlying cloud infrastructure fabric.

Service Broker, on the other hand, is the storefront or the consumption portal. Its purpose is to provide a simple, user-friendly service catalog where end-users can request and manage their workloads. A Service Broker administrator is responsible for curating this catalog. They import the finished blueprints from Automation Assembler, along with other content types like vRealize Orchestrator workflows, and publish them as catalog items. They can also apply additional policies, such as approvals and custom forms, to control and simplify the request process.

Understanding this separation of concerns is critical for the 2V0-31.21 exam. Automation Assembler is for the 'creators' who build the automation, and Service Broker is for the 'consumers' who use it. While they are separate services with their own distinct roles, they are tightly integrated. A blueprint created in Assembler is made available for consumption by publishing it to Service Broker. This dual-service model provides a powerful combination of sophisticated back-end authoring and simplified front-end consumption.

Exploring vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) Integration

Extensibility is a key feature of any enterprise-grade automation platform, and in vRealize Automation, this is primarily provided by vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). The 2V0-31.21 exam requires a solid understanding of the new, modern vRO architecture and its tight integration with vRA 8.3. In previous versions, vRO was typically deployed as a separate, standalone appliance. In the 8.x architecture, a vRO instance is now embedded directly within the vRealize Automation appliance and runs as another set of containerized services managed by Kubernetes.

This new, embedded vRO provides a powerful and convenient way to extend the capabilities of the platform. vRO is a workflow engine that allows you to create complex and sophisticated automation routines by dragging and dropping pre-built tasks onto a design canvas. It comes with a rich library of plug-ins that provide out-of-the-box integration with a vast range of technologies, including vSphere, Active Directory, and various networking and storage platforms. This allows you to automate tasks that go beyond the standard capabilities of vRA blueprints.

A key aspect of the modern vRO architecture, which is relevant for the 2V0-31.21 exam, is its integration with Git. You can now configure your vRO instance to use a Git repository as the source of truth for your workflows and other content. This allows you to apply modern DevOps and CI/CD practices to your workflow development. Multiple developers can work on workflows in their own branches, and a formal process of code review and merging can be used to manage the promotion of content into production.

The integration between vRA and the embedded vRO is seamless. You can call a vRO workflow directly from a vRA blueprint, or you can publish a workflow to the Service Broker catalog to allow for self-service execution. Furthermore, you can use subscriptions to automatically trigger a workflow based on a specific event in the vRA lifecycle. A clear understanding of these integration patterns is essential for mastering the extensibility domain of the exam.

Key Terminology and Concepts for the 2V0-31.21 Exam

As you begin your journey with vRealize Automation 8.3, you will encounter a new set of terminology that is fundamental to understanding the platform. The 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to be fluent in this new language. These concepts are the building blocks that you will use to configure the system and build your automation solutions. Let's define some of the most important terms that you will need to know.

A Cloud Account is the connection endpoint to a public or private cloud platform. It is where you provide the credentials and connection details for a specific vCenter Server, an AWS account, or an Azure subscription. This is the first object you will configure, as it is what gives vRA access to the underlying infrastructure resources.

A Cloud Zone is a slice of the resources from a Cloud Account. It represents a specific pool of compute resources that can be made available for consumption. For a vSphere Cloud Account, a Cloud Zone is typically mapped to a vSphere cluster. For a public cloud account, it is mapped to a region. Cloud Zones are the basis for resource allocation and governance.

A Project is the primary unit of tenancy and governance in vRA. It is a logical construct that groups together users, infrastructure resources (by assigning Cloud Zones to the project), and a set of governance policies. Every deployment in vRA belongs to a specific Project, and the policies of that project will apply to it.

Flavor Mappings and Image Mappings are essential for creating cloud-agnostic blueprints. A Flavor Mapping is an abstract, T-shirt size (e.g., small, medium, large) that you can map to a specific instance type in each of your Cloud Zones. Similarly, an Image Mapping is an abstract operating system name (e.g., 'ubuntu-20.04') that you can map to a specific template or machine image in each Cloud Zone. These abstractions are key to building portable blueprints.

The Foundation of Multi-Cloud: Configuring Cloud Accounts

The journey into vRealize Automation begins with connecting the platform to your underlying infrastructure. This is achieved through the configuration of Cloud Accounts, a fundamental concept for the 2V0-31.21 exam. A Cloud Account is the credential-based endpoint that allows vRealize Automation to communicate with and manage the resources in a specific public or private cloud environment. It is the foundational layer upon which all other constructs, like Cloud Zones and Projects, are built. Without Cloud Accounts, vRA has no access to any infrastructure to automate.

The process of adding a Cloud Account is straightforward but requires careful attention to detail. From the Automation Assembler service, you navigate to the Cloud Accounts section and select the type of endpoint you wish to add. vRealize Automation 8.3 provides out-of-the-box support for a wide range of endpoints, including VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud on AWS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The 2V0-31.21 exam will expect you to be familiar with the configuration process for the major cloud types, especially vSphere.

For each Cloud Account type, you will need to provide the necessary credentials and connection information. For a vSphere Cloud Account, this would include the vCenter Server address, a username, and a password. The user account provided must have sufficient privileges in vCenter to perform the required operations, such as cloning virtual machines and reconfiguring hardware. For a public cloud like AWS, you would provide an Access Key and a Secret Key.

Once a Cloud Account is added and validated, vRealize Automation will begin a data collection process. It will inventory the resources available in that endpoint, such as the compute clusters, networks, and storage datastores in vSphere, or the VPCs, subnets, and security groups in AWS. This collected data is what populates the options available for subsequent configuration steps. A solid understanding of how to add and manage these Cloud Accounts is the non-negotiable first step in building a multi-cloud automation platform.

Defining Cloud Zones and Resource Allocation

After configuring a Cloud Account, you have effectively told vRealize Automation where your infrastructure lives. The next step is to define which specific parts of that infrastructure should be made available for consumption. This is the role of the Cloud Zone, a critical governance and placement construct that you must master for the 2V0-31.21 exam. A Cloud Zone is a policy-driven slice of the resources from a single Cloud Account. It represents a pool of compute resources with specific capabilities.

For a vSphere Cloud Account, a Cloud Zone is typically mapped to a single vSphere cluster or, in some cases, a resource pool within a cluster. For an AWS Cloud Account, a Cloud Zone is mapped to a specific AWS Region. By creating Cloud Zones, you are effectively carving up your total infrastructure into logical pools that can be independently managed and governed. For example, you could create separate Cloud Zones for your production and development vSphere clusters, or for the US-East-1 and EU-West-1 regions in AWS.

When you configure a Cloud Zone, you define its name, associate it with a Cloud Account, and then select the specific compute resources that will be part of that zone. A key feature of Cloud Zones is the ability to add capability tags. These are user-defined tags that describe the characteristics of the infrastructure in that zone. For example, you could add a tag env:prod to your production Cloud Zone and a tag pci:compliant to a Cloud Zone that resides in a secure, PCI-compliant vSphere cluster.

These tags are the foundation of vRealize Automation's placement engine. As we will see later, you can use corresponding constraint tags in your blueprints and projects to direct deployments to the appropriate Cloud Zones. The 2V0-31.21 exam will test your understanding of how to use this powerful tagging mechanism to control workload placement. Cloud Zones are the bridge between the raw infrastructure defined in a Cloud Account and the curated resources that are made available to your users through Projects.

Organizing Consumption with Projects

If Cloud Accounts are the "where" and Cloud Zones are the "what," then Projects are the "who" and "how" of vRealize Automation governance. A Project is the primary unit of user management and policy enforcement in the platform, and a deep understanding of its function is essential for the 2V0-31.21 exam. A Project is a logical entity that groups together a set of users or groups, a collection of infrastructure resources (via Cloud Zones), and a set of governance policies that dictate how those users can consume those resources.

When you create a Project, the first step is to add members. You can add individual users or, more commonly, user groups that are synchronized from your Active Directory. For each member, you can assign them a role within the context of that Project, such as Administrator or Member. A Project Administrator has full control over the project's configuration, while a Project Member can only deploy and manage resources within the project. This provides a simple but effective model for delegated administration.

The next critical step is to provision infrastructure for the Project. This is done by adding one or more Cloud Zones to the Project. This action makes the compute resources from those Cloud Zones available for consumption by the members of that Project. You can also set specific resource limits at the Project level for each Cloud Zone, such as a maximum number of instances or a quota for memory and CPU. This is a key mechanism for controlling resource consumption and preventing any single project from monopolizing the infrastructure.

Every blueprint deployment in vRealize Automation is made in the context of a specific Project. The user who requests the blueprint must be a member of the Project, and the deployment will be placed in one of the Cloud Zones that have been assigned to that Project. All the governance policies associated with the Project, such as lease times and approval rules, will be applied to the deployment. Mastering the configuration of Projects is central to implementing a secure, multi-tenant, and well-governed cloud environment.

Creating Mappings for Agnostic Consumption

One of the most powerful goals of a cloud management platform is to provide a layer of abstraction that allows for the creation of cloud-agnostic automation content. In vRealize Automation, this is primarily achieved through Image and Flavor Mappings. These constructs are essential for building portable blueprints that can be deployed across different cloud endpoints without modification. The 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to be proficient in creating and using these mappings to enable true multi-cloud provisioning.

A Flavor Mapping allows you to define a set of abstract, standardized compute sizes, often referred to as T-shirt sizes (e.g., small, medium, large). For each of these abstract sizes, you then map it to a specific, concrete instance type or virtual machine configuration in each of your Cloud Zones. For example, the 'small' flavor could be mapped to a 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM configuration in your vSphere Cloud Zone, and to a 't3.small' instance type in your AWS Cloud Zone.

Similarly, an Image Mapping allows you to define a set of abstract operating system images. For example, you could create an image mapping named 'centos-8'. You would then map this abstract name to the specific vSphere template or AWS AMI that contains your standard CentOS 8 build in each of your Cloud Zones. This ensures that a request for 'centos-8' will always result in the correct, approved image being deployed, regardless of the target cloud.

When a blueprint developer creates a blueprint, they do not need to specify a hard-coded template name or instance type. Instead, they can simply request a 'small' flavor and a 'centos-8' image. At deployment time, vRealize Automation will use the mappings defined for the target Cloud Zone to resolve these abstract requests into the correct, platform-specific resources. This abstraction is a core concept that you must understand for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Network Profiles and Configuration

Networking is a critical component of any application deployment, and vRealize Automation provides a flexible framework for managing network configurations through Network Profiles. A Network Profile is a collection of network settings that can be applied to a specific Cloud Zone. It defines the properties of the networks that are available for consumption in that zone, such as the subnet masks, gateway addresses, and DNS servers. A solid understanding of how to configure and use Network Profiles is a key skill for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

vRealize Automation supports several different types of Network Profiles, each designed for a different networking scenario. An 'Existing Network' profile is used to leverage pre-existing networks in your cloud endpoint. For vSphere, this would be a standard or distributed port group. For AWS, it would be an existing subnet. When you create this type of profile, you simply select the existing networks that you want to make available for provisioning.

For more dynamic scenarios, you can use profiles for 'Private' or 'Public' on-demand networks. These profiles are used in conjunction with a network automation provider, such as NSX, to create new, dedicated network segments for each deployment. This is a more advanced use case but provides a high degree of isolation and security for multi-tenant environments. The 2V0-31.21 exam will focus more on the 'Existing Network' profile, as it is the most common scenario.

Once a Network Profile is created, it is associated with a Cloud Account and a region. The networks defined within it can then be used in your blueprint designs. By using tags on the networks in the profile and corresponding constraint tags in the blueprint, you can create a policy-driven system for network selection. For example, you could tag your PCI-compliant networks and create blueprints that will automatically be placed on them, ensuring that security and compliance requirements are met.

Storage Profiles for Tiered Storage Management

Similar to how Network Profiles manage network resources, Storage Profiles are used to manage and classify storage resources. The 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to understand how to use Storage Profiles to provide tiered storage options and to apply storage-related policies. A Storage Profile allows you to group together datastores or storage policies from your underlying cloud platform and present them as logical tiers of storage with specific capabilities.

The process begins by creating a Storage Profile and associating it with a specific cloud account and region. Within the profile, you can then define one or more storage policies. For a vSphere environment, you can map these policies to specific datastores or datastore clusters. A common practice is to create capability-based tiers, such as 'Gold', 'Silver', and 'Bronze'. The 'Gold' tier could be mapped to your high-performance, all-flash datastores, while the 'Bronze' tier could be mapped to your lower-cost, capacity-oriented datastores.

Just like with other constructs in vRealize Automation, tags are a key part of the storage profile configuration. You can add capability tags to each storage policy you define within the profile. For example, you could add a tag tier:gold to your Gold storage policy and a tag replication:enabled to a policy that is mapped to a replicated datastore.

These tags can then be used in your blueprints to control storage placement. A blueprint developer can add a constraint tag to a disk resource in their blueprint, such as tier:gold. When this blueprint is deployed, the vRealize Automation placement engine will ensure that the virtual machine's disks are placed on a datastore that matches this capability tag. This provides a powerful, policy-driven way to ensure that applications get the appropriate level of storage performance and protection, a key governance concept for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

The Role of Tags in vRealize Automation

By now, it should be clear that tags are a central and pervasive concept in vRealize Automation 8.3. The 2V0-31.21 exam will test your understanding of the tagging mechanism in various contexts, as it is the primary engine for creating policies and driving placement decisions. A tag is simply a key-value pair of text that can be applied to almost any object in the platform, from infrastructure resources to blueprints and projects. The power of tags comes from the interaction between capability tags and constraint tags.

Capability tags are placed on the infrastructure resources. You add them to Cloud Zones, Network Profiles, and Storage Profiles to describe their characteristics. For example, a Cloud Zone in a secure, PCI-compliant environment could be tagged with pci:true. A network that is configured for development use could be tagged with env:dev. These tags effectively create a dictionary of the capabilities of your underlying infrastructure.

Constraint tags are placed on the consumption side, primarily within blueprints and projects. They express the requirements of a deployment. For example, a blueprint for a sensitive financial application might include a hard constraint tag of pci:true. A project that is designated for the development team could have a constraint tag of env:dev.

The magic happens during the provisioning process. The vRealize Automation placement engine acts as a matchmaker. It takes the constraint tags from the blueprint and the project and looks for infrastructure resources (Cloud Zones, networks, storage) that have matching capability tags. A deployment will only be placed on resources that satisfy all of its constraints. This elegant and flexible mechanism is what allows you to build a powerful, policy-driven, multi-cloud placement engine, and mastering it is absolutely critical for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Governance and Policies with Projects

Projects are the primary vehicle for applying governance policies to your deployments. The 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to be familiar with the different types of policies that can be configured at the Project level to control the lifecycle and consumption of resources. These policies ensure that all deployments within a project adhere to the organization's business and operational rules, providing a crucial layer of control and standardization.

One of the most fundamental policies is the Lease Policy. A lease is a set period of time for which a deployment is allowed to exist. By applying a lease policy to a project, you can enforce a maximum lifetime for all deployments provisioned by that project's members. For example, you could set a 30-day lease for all deployments in a development project. Before the lease expires, the owner will receive a notification, and they may be given the option to renew it. If the lease expires, the deployment will be automatically destroyed, preventing resource sprawl.

Day 2 Action Policies allow you to control which post-provisioning operations are available to the owners of a deployment. These are the actions that can be performed on a resource after it has been created, such as 'Power On', 'Power Off', 'Resize', or 'Create Snapshot'. By creating a policy, you can selectively enable or disable these actions for all deployments within a project. For example, you might disable the 'Resize' action for production workloads to prevent uncontrolled changes.

Finally, while not configured directly on the Project, Approval Policies are scoped by Project. These policies, configured in Service Broker, allow you to inject a manual approval step into the provisioning workflow. The policy can be triggered based on a wide range of criteria, such as the estimated cost of the deployment or the type of resources being requested. A clear understanding of how to use these different policy types to enforce governance was a key domain of the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Introduction to Cloud Assembly Blueprints

The heart of the automation creation process in vRealize Automation is the blueprint. A key focus of the 2V0-31.21 exam is your ability to understand, design, and manage these blueprints. A vRealize Automation blueprint is a declarative model that describes the desired state of an application or infrastructure service. It is effectively an "infrastructure as code" definition, specifying all the components of a deployment, such as virtual machines, networks, and software, as well as their properties and relationships.

In vRealize Automation 8.3, blueprints are written in a standardized, YAML-based syntax. This is a significant shift from the proprietary formats of older versions and aligns the platform with modern DevOps practices. This code-based approach means that blueprints can be treated like any other piece of software code: they can be stored in source control systems like Git, they can be versioned, and they can be managed through CI/CD pipelines. The 2V0-31.21 exam will expect you to have a basic familiarity with YAML syntax and the structure of a vRA blueprint.

To aid in the creation of these blueprints, the Automation Assembler service provides two complementary interfaces. There is a rich graphical design canvas where you can drag and drop resource objects from a palette and visually connect them. As you build the topology on the canvas, the corresponding YAML code is automatically generated in a split-screen view. There is also a full YAML code editor for those who prefer to write the code directly.

A finished blueprint is a self-contained, reusable artifact. It captures the best practices for deploying a particular service and ensures that every deployment is consistent and compliant. By parameterizing blueprints with inputs, you can create a single, flexible blueprint that can be used for multiple scenarios. A deep, practical understanding of how to construct and manage these blueprints is arguably the most important skill for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Building a Basic vSphere Virtual Machine Blueprint

To solidify your understanding for the 2V0-31.21 exam, it is essential to be able to walk through the process of creating a basic blueprint. Let's consider the simplest and most common use case: deploying a single vSphere virtual machine. This process brings together many of the foundational concepts, such as resources, properties, and inputs, into a practical example. The process begins in the Automation Assembler service on the blueprint design canvas.

You would start by dragging a 'vSphere Machine' resource from the resource palette on the left onto the canvas. This action adds a new resource block to the YAML code. This resource block will have a logical name, such as Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1, and a type, Cloud.vSphere.Machine. The next step is to configure the properties for this machine resource within the properties section of the YAML.

The most important properties to define are the image and flavor. Instead of hard-coding a specific vSphere template and VM size, you will use the abstract Image and Flavor Mappings that you have already configured. For example, you would set the image property to 'centos-8' and the flavor property to 'small'. This makes the blueprint more portable, as these abstract names will be resolved to the correct underlying resources at deployment time.

Next, you need to connect the machine to a network. You would drag a 'Network' resource onto the canvas. In its properties, you could use a constraint tag to ensure it connects to a network with the capability env:dev. You would then visually drag a connection from the network interface on the machine resource to the network resource on the canvas. This creates the association in the YAML. This simple, two-resource blueprint is a complete, deployable artifact and represents the fundamental building block of knowledge for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Creating Cloud-Agnostic Blueprints

The true power of vRealize Automation is realized when you create cloud-agnostic blueprints that can deploy workloads to multiple cloud endpoints from a single definition. The 2V0-31.21 exam will test your ability to design these portable and reusable automation artifacts. This capability is enabled by leveraging the abstraction layers that you configure in the platform, such as mappings and tags. A cloud-agnostic blueprint avoids using any resource types or properties that are specific to a single cloud platform.

Instead of using a Cloud.vSphere.Machine resource, a cloud-agnostic blueprint would use the generic Cloud.Machine resource type. This generic resource type has a common set of properties that can be applied across different clouds, such as image, flavor, and constraints. By using this generic type, you are telling vRealize Automation that you do not care about the underlying platform; you only care about the desired characteristics of the machine.

The key to making this work is the use of Flavor Mappings, Image Mappings, and constraint tags. As described before, you would set the flavor and image properties to your abstract, T-shirt size and OS names. The real placement logic is driven by constraint tags. In the constraints section of the machine resource, you can add one or more tags that specify the requirements for the deployment environment. For example, you might add a constraint [env:prod].

When a user requests this blueprint, the vRealize Automation placement engine will look at the Cloud Zones assigned to the user's project. It will find a Cloud Zone that has a capability tag of env:prod. If that Cloud Zone happens to be in vSphere, it will use the vSphere-specific mappings for the flavor and image to deploy a vSphere VM. If the matching Cloud Zone is in AWS, it will use the AWS-specific mappings to deploy an EC2 instance. This powerful mechanism is a core concept for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Adding Inputs and Custom Properties to Blueprints

A static blueprint that deploys the exact same configuration every time has limited utility. To create flexible and reusable blueprints, you must use inputs to parameterize them. The 2V0-31.21 exam requires a solid understanding of how to add an inputs section to your blueprint to allow users to make choices at request time. This transforms a simple blueprint into a customizable catalog item. Inputs allow users to specify details like the deployment name, the machine size, or the operating system.

The inputs section is defined at the top of the blueprint YAML. For each input you want to create, you give it a logical name and define its properties, such as the type (e.g., string, integer), a user-friendly title, and an optional default value. For example, you could create an input called machine_size of type string, with the title "Select Machine Size".

You can then reference this input in the properties section of your resources using the syntax ${input.machine_size}. So, for your machine resource, you would set the flavor property to ${input.machine_size}. When a user requests this blueprint, the request form will now display a field labeled "Select Machine Size". The value that the user enters or selects in this field will be used to determine the flavor of the deployed machine.

You can also create more advanced inputs, such as drop-down lists with a predefined set of allowed values, or boolean checkboxes. In addition to inputs, you can also add custom properties to your resources. These are key-value pairs that can be used to pass extra metadata to the provisioned machine or to other integrated systems. Mastering the use of inputs to create user-friendly and customizable blueprints is a critical skill for the 2V0-31.21 exam.

Conclusion

Provisioning a virtual machine is only the first step. To make it useful, you often need to perform initial configuration tasks inside the guest operating system, such as setting the hostname, creating user accounts, or installing software packages. The 2V0-31.21 exam requires you to be proficient with the standard mechanism for this in vRealize Automation, which is cloud-init for Linux and Cloudbase-Init for Windows. These are industry-standard tools for cloud instance initialization.

vRealize Automation supports these tools through a blueprint property called cloudConfig. This property allows you to pass a multi-part cloud-init or cloud-config script directly within the blueprint YAML. The script is then passed to the deployed virtual machine and executed by the cloud-init or Cloudbase-Init service during the first boot. This provides a powerful and agentless way to perform post-provisioning customization. Your virtual machine templates must have these tools pre-installed for this to work.

The cloudConfig script is written in a simple YAML format. You can include various modules to perform different tasks. For example, you can use the users module to create new local user accounts and set their passwords or SSH keys. You can use the runcmd module to execute arbitrary shell commands or scripts. You can use the package_update and packages modules to patch the operating system and install required software packages from a repository.

This method is far more flexible and maintainable than creating dozens of different, highly customized templates. You can have a single, generic base template for each operating system and then use cloudConfig in your blueprints to customize each deployment for its specific purpose. The 2V0-31.21 exam will expect you to be familiar with the syntax of cloudConfig and to know how to use it to perform common guest OS customization tasks.

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