Puppet Plug-in 3.x for vRealize Automation end of life and considerations for VMware’s 8.x implementation going forward

The Puppet Plug-in 3.x for vRealize Automation (vRA) 7.x provides tools and components that create, provision, and manage application stacks on virtual servers. In vRA 7.x, Puppet designed, developed, and maintained the Puppet plug-in 3.x for vRA. The Puppet integration for version 8.x of vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly is now fully owned and developed by VMware.

Support for the Puppet plug-in for vRA

Support for the Puppet integration for vRA 8.x is provided by VMware.

Support for the Puppet plug-in 3.x for vRA 7.x is provided by Puppet. The end of life (EOL) for Puppet plug-in 3.x is the same as the EOL for the corresponding version of vRA, per the Platform Support Lifecycle policy.

• Support for version 3.0 to 3.2 ends on 17 December 2020 (the EOL for vRA 7.3 to 7.5).

• Support for version 3.3 ends on 11 April 2022 (the EOL for vRA 7.6).

Migration to vRA 8.x

Some features in the Puppet plug-in 3.3 are not fully matched in the Puppet integration for vRA 8.x. They are:

• Using alternative node classification

• Leveraging Heira based data repositories

• Using Facter for system inventory management

• Specifying Custom Properties to Virtual Machines

• Configuring alternative exit code available within installation logs

We suggest that you review these limitations to align your upgrades with feature enhancements in upcoming vRealize 8.x releases. We will continue to work with VMware to ensure feature parity with the Puppet plug-in 3.3.