Preface

At VMware, we often talk about our clients' experiences with our technologies as journeys that they undertake.

The original journey was all about Virtualization; people started with virtualization first in their IT Department trying this magical new technology, before using it in Testing and Development and then in Production. The final step of their journey was to virtualize everything, including the most critical applications on which their business runs.

Now we are on a new journey, this time, to the Cloud. There are many different definitions of 'Cloud', but they share some common characteristics, such as:

• Pooling: This is the pooling of hardware resources so they can be shared as needed
• Elasticity: Leveraging the pooled resources to allow workloads to grow and shrink to meet demand as required in real time
• Automation: Everything in the cloud should be automated and fast; there should be no more waiting for administrators to spin up workloads or install applications
• Self Service: Consumers of cloud technology should be able to request the resources they want via a self-service portal or an API

Regardless of whether you are operating a private, public, or a hybrid cloud, you can expect to see these characteristics in place.

The technology that delivers on these cloud promises is a Cloud Management Platform (CMP), and VMware's CMP has three elements:

• vRealize Operations: This is a solution delivering on the operational disciplines required to operate your cloud.
• vRealize Automation: This has the capability to automate the creation and deletion of objects and workloads during their lifecycle in your cloud. This also includes a self-service portal and an API as well as governance in the form of approvals.
• vRealize Business: This provides visibility into the costs of running the workloads and services in your cloud.

This book is about the vRealize Operations part of VMware's CMP and will take you on a journey to understand how vRealize Operations can be used to deliver the operational disciplines demanded of today's cloud administrators.