Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

Folks this truly is an amazing leap forward for the vRA platform. Just look at the list of new features below, which is not a complete list of all there is with this release. Keep checking back for informative step-by-step articles as well as updated versions of our workflow packages to be published by the end of this month.

vRealize Automation 7.0 is a cutting edge release which provides an industry lead cloud automation solution to our customers. With the streamlined installation wizard, simplified SSO configuration, integrated graphical infrastructure and application blueprint authoring and deployment capabilities, and many other new enhancements, customers will be able to maximize their return on investment by extremely shortened time to value for cloud service delivery.

Following are some of the new features:

Streamlined and Automated Wizard-based Installation

Introduces management agent to automate the installation of Windows components and to collect logs

Automates the deployment of all vRealize Automation components

Installation wizards based on deployment needs: Minimal (Express) and Enterprise (Distributed) Installations

Simplified Deployment Architecture and High Availability Configuration

Embedded authentication service by using VMware Identity Manager

Converged Application Services in vRealize Automation Appliance

Reduced minimal number of appliances for HA configuration

Automated embedded PostgreSQL clustering with manual failover

Automated embedded vRealize Orchestrator clustering

Enhanced Authentication Service

Integrated user interface providing a common look and feel

Enabled multiple features by new authentication service

Simplified Blueprint Authoring for Infrastructure and Applications

Single unified model for both machine and application blueprints and unified graphical canvas for designing machine and application blueprint with dependencies and network topology

Software component (formerly software service in Application Services) authoring on vSphere, vCloud Air, vCloud Director, and AWS endpoints)

Extend or define external integrations in the canvas by using XaaS (formerly Advanced Service Design)

Enable team collaboration and role segregation by enhancing and introducing fine-grain roles

Blueprint as code and human-readable which can be created in editor of choice and stored in source control or import and export in the same or multiple vRealize Automation 7.0 instances

Customer-requested machine and application blueprints provided

Additional blueprints available on the VMware Solutions Exchange

Simplified and Enhanced NSX Support for Blueprint Authoring and Deployment

Dynamically configure NSX Network and micro-segmentation unique for each application

Automated connectivity to existing or on-demand networks

Micro-segmentation for application stack isolation

Automated security policy enforcement by using NSX security policies, groups, and tags

On-demand dedicated NSX load balancer

Simplified vRealize Automation REST API

Simplified schema for API requests by switching to normal JSON model

Follow-on request URIs and templates exposed as links in response bodies (HATEOAS)

New APIs to support business group and reservation management

Improved documentation and samples

Enhanced Cloud Support for vCloud Air and AWS

Software component authoring for vCloud Air, vCloud Director, and Amazon AWS

Simplified blueprint authoring for vCloud Air and vCloud Director

Improved vCloud Air endpoint configuration

Optional proxy configuration

Event-Based Extensibility Provided by Event Broker

Use vRealize Orchestrator workflows to subscribe any events triggered by most events happen in the system or custom events

Support blocking and non-blocking subscriptions

Provide administrative user interface for extensibility configurations

Obsolete .NET based lifecycle callouts and provide upgrade proof extensibility and configurations

Enhanced Integration with vRealize Business

Unified location in vRealize Business to define flexible pricing policies for infrastructure resource, machine and application blueprints, and all type of endpoints in vRealize Automation

Support operational cost, one time cost and cost on custom properties

Role-based showback reports and fully leverage new features in vRealize Business 7.0

CloudClient Update

Content management (import and export blueprints between instances or tenants in vRealize Automation 7.0)

Existing functionality updated for vRealize Automation 7.0 APIs

vRealize Orchestrator 7 New Features

Introduce vRealize Orchestrator Control Center for easy monitoring and troubleshooting

Significant Smart Client improvements including Workflow tagging UI, Client reconnect options and enhanced search capabilities

vSphere 6.X vAPI endpoint support

Other Improvements

Enhanced management of tenant, business group, approval, and entitlements

Customizable columns in the table for a given type of custom resource defined in XaaS

Accept a mix of license input, including vRealize Suite, vCloud Suite, and vRealize Automation Standalone

Improved stability, quality, and performance

Download Details:

Download Landing Page https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VRO_VRA_PLUGIN_700&productId=561 Documentation Landing Page http://vmware.com/support/pubs/vco_plugins_pubs.html Release Notes http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/orchestrator/plugins/vra-plugin-70-release-notes.html