How To Learn vRealize Automation #vRA

Hello All,

Over and over again I always have received the same question. “José, how did you learn so vRA & vRO”. Well, I can tell you, there is no Magic and YES, you need to put some effort on it.

I had quite some time to prepare myself for this journey, where discipline and planning made the trick for a good & faster adoption.  If I can divide the learning in 4 major topics that would be:

Planning ( What / When / How long / Goal )

What – What will you study

book chapter / specific web page / video classes / Etc

Don’t be generic neither stay on “googling it..” you will lose time and won’t focus

When – Yes, Specific Date / Time

Try to schedule every day for few hours instead of 1-2 days long hours

Try to use techniques like Pomodoro’s Technique

How Long

Plan your session timeline (days/weeks) & daily breaks (short/long)

Goal

Have pre-settled goals – It will help you to push until the daily-goal

Do not get distracted by anything (cellphones/whatsapp/facebook/etc) that will kill your attention and lose time.

Hereby example what I have done myself using toggl ( or at least what I remembered to have started the app😊 )

Having said this, time for the GOAL of this POST.

1. Collect all information about what you want to study (if you are reading here, YOU already have what you need! )
2. Read the step above… 😊

I am big fan of Eric Shanks (https://twitter.com/eric_shanks ), besides his skills and blog (https://theithollow.com ) he has created 2 full blow courses about vRealize Automation 7.

Don’t worry about version at this stage (7.0 – 7.4) really same interface and few characteristics are changing it. If you want to have the latest and greatest version 7.5 few things will change (mainly on UI/Service Catalog), anyway “you will manage”!

As first Step, subscribe to 30 days trial from Pluralsight.com in order to watch the video classes Eric has created.

Disclaimer 1:  I don’t receive anything to recommend such service or blogs/posts, although It worked very well for me.

Side Note: If you would like to have 3 months trial from Pluralsight, just follow the link below, here MSDN gives you for learning visual studio

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/subscriptions/vs-pluralsight

Getting Started with vRealize Automation 7

< https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/getting-started-vrealize-automation-7/table-of-contents >

Of course, it’s very important to always practice what the videos has shown you, hence DEMO it !

As second step, The best way of Demo it, is doing from scratch, although not many people has a home lab with 32GB+ Ram in order to run this beast! So you also can use the following links to have good idea about the product & run most of the scenarios (except deployment) on  VMware HOL (hands-on-lab);

https://labs.hol.vmware.com/HOL/catalogs/catalog/1212

HOL-1921-01-CMP – vRealize Automation 7 – Getting Started

HOL-1921-02-CMP – vRealize Automation 7 – Advanced Topics

HOL-1921-03-CMP – vRealize Automation 7 – Advanced Extensibility

As third Step, continue the 2nd video Eric has created about Extending Capabilities with vRA.

Particularly speaking I really love this videos, where it touches integration with NSX, vRO (briefly) and one of most important things is Custom Properties & Service Broker.

This is very important to start to understand, once all Custom workflows (vRO) will require those two guys to do a good job for us later.

Extending the Capabilities of vRealize Automation 7

< https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/extending-capabilities-of-vrealize-automation-7/table-of-contents >

Other blog that I use a lot and respect all his content is from Michael Rudloff (https://twitter.com/michael_rudloff / https://open902.com/ ).

If you have problems to deploy vRA about certificates or want to learn better how OpenSSL and Root Certificates in Windows works, hereby a GREAT POST (https://open902.com/create-a-windows-enterprise-ca-and-issue-certificates-for-vra-and-other-vmware-products-with-examples/ );

Once you got familiar with “Hands-on”, it’s time to understand deeply what and how things works. Hereby the best book I have read so far about vRA & IT’S FREE!!!

BIG THANKS TO CLOUD ADVISORS Team to have shared this with community

Persönliches

That’s it guys!!! You  have found the jackpot and I am 1000% sure you will learn way faster “naked vRA”.

Blogs to take a look:

Eric Shanks : https://theithollow.com/2016/01/11/vrealize-automation-7-guide/

Michael Rudloff: https://open902.com/

vRA Book: https://cloudadvisors.net/vra-buch/

#See ya!

• vRA