AWS CloudFormation vs. vRealize Configuration Manager (discontinued)

I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.

Incentivized

If you want the best compatibility with VMware products, this is it. There are other HyperVisor platforms out there, however, this software is native to VMWare. Reduces potential security threats through a unified approach to configuration management across the physical and virtual infrastructure.

Incentivized

• All resources can segregated based on stacks which provides greater visibility
• A complete audit trail of what went wrong while deploying a particular resource
• Automatically rollbacks if any service as part of CloudFormation results in an error
• The UI tool is useful

Incentivized

• Active monitoring of Syslog and notifications based upon the matching conditions.
• Change management- Changes can be pushed to several system from one place. It also keeps the record of what changes and who made the change even if the changes has not been made through VMware vCenter Configuration Manager.
• Robust reporting feature- Enhanced filters features and report generation in excel format presents the data in readable and to the point.
• Integration with ticketing tool further ensures that changes are approved before implementation.

Incentivized

• Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
• Slow to create, delete or update.
• Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.

Incentivized

• It a little cumbersome to get all features up and running.
• Takes a bit of knowledge to get to all configured and thievery setup.
• It would be great if it had a monitoring tool internally, a tool like Nagios for example.

Incentivized

It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.

Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.

However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.

Incentivized

Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information. Management guide.For information copy of the original. The new virtual Cloning virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information

Incentivized

• BMC TrueSight Server Automation
• VMware vCenter Configuration Manager has good reporting feature.
• The interface is very user-friendly and is simple to use.
• Multiple Platform support i.e Windows, Linux, UNIX
• Patch management and templates are easy to configure and use.

Incentivized

• + We can standup a VPC in minutes
• - It took a lot of inital time to set up
• + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.

Incentivized

• Really good ROI!!! Every penny paid with a smile on my face!!!
• Ease of use, simplified GUI, evenhanded features, strong support behind it, compatibility with other products.
• Cuts time for configuration drastically.

Incentivized