VMware vRealize Automation (vRA) Review

Our primary use case is to deploy a private cloud. It has integrated well with an in-house-developed front end. Then we have the vRA's all over the backend and all the deployments in the vSphere. 

The most valuable feature would be the scalability. It's very easy to add more capacity into it once you've already got it set up. It's just cases deploy, and more hypervisors and we're off.

In terms of provisioning, it has definitely helped speed-wise. It simplifies making the environment bigger because it's easier to scale out. We don't have the downtime of having to wait to get more hardware and to add it in.

I have found bits of this solution to be intuitive and user-friendly. We've been on a training course for it because it's quite a big product. We don't really use it the way it's intended to be used. We don't use it the standard way, so it takes a bit more poking around.

We haven't had any problems stability-wise with vRA.

We haven't hit any limits yet, scalability is good. 

We have a support contract with VMware but we haven't had to use their technical support. 

The setup was fairly simple. It's a matter of integrating it with all the other systems and then getting all the sorts to match with the certain policies we've got.

We integrated in-house. 

It's not cheap. It would be more expensive to get an alternative though because we'd have to buy the extras for it.

I would rate this solution an eight. There's always room for improvement, nothing's perfect but we haven't had any major problems because of it or with it.

I would advise someone looking into this solution to check out the training before you get it and not afterward because it covers all of the deployment.