Introduction
Hello to all readers of the blog about IT Architecture and Training!
In the previous article of the “VMware Training and Certification. Year 2025” series, we examined VMware Aria Operations and VMware Aria Operations for Logs as core components of VMware’s cloud management and operational intelligence platform.
In this article, we focus on VMware Aria Automation – the platform that enables infrastructure and application automation through self-service provisioning, policy-based governance, and extensible workflows across VMware and multi-cloud environments.
The Aria Automation learning domain includes training programs designed to help IT professionals design, implement, and operate automation frameworks for modern private, hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructures. Key areas include blueprint-based provisioning, infrastructure as code, policy enforcement, extensibility through integrations and workflows, and automation governance.
This article provides an overview of the current VMware Authorized Training programs for Aria Automation, their structure, learning objectives, and alignment with real-world enterprise automation architectures.
VMware Aria Automation
From an architectural perspective, VMware Aria Automation serves as the automation and orchestration layer of VMware’s cloud management platform. It enables standardized, policy-driven provisioning of infrastructure and application services across vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation, and public cloud environments.
At its core, Aria Automation is built around blueprint-based service modeling (formerly Cloud Templates), allowing architects to define infrastructure as code using declarative YAML. These blueprints describe compute, storage, networking, security, and application components, ensuring consistent, repeatable deployments across environments.
The platform incorporates a policy engine that enforces governance rules such as placement constraints, sizing policies, naming standards, lease management, and cost controls. This enables organizations to balance self-service agility with centralized governance and compliance.
Aria Automation is tightly integrated with VMware Aria Operations for intelligent placement, capacity awareness, and cost optimization, and with VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle for standardized deployment and lifecycle management. Its extensibility framework supports integrations with external systems and tools through REST APIs, event-driven workflows, and VMware Aria Orchestrator, enabling end-to-end automation scenarios.
This architectural design allows enterprises to implement a unified automation platform that supports hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, accelerates application delivery, and establishes automation as a foundational operational capability.
The main current training programs for VMware Aria Automation technologies are:
● VMware Aria Automation: Install, Configure, Manage [V8.17].
- Course code: VAAICM817.
- Duration: 5 days.
- Level of difficulty: Professional.
- Target audience: System administrators and system integrators responsible for designing, implementing, and managing VMware Aria Automation.
- Prerequisites: This course requires the students to have strong knowledge on basic VMware vSphere concepts.
- Students should be able to perform the following tasks with no assistance or guidance before enrolling in this course:
- Create VMware® vCenter objects, such as data centers and folders;
- Create a virtual machine using a wizard or a template;
- Modify a virtual machine’s hardware;
- Navigate through the VMware vSphere Client.
- Students should be able to perform the following tasks with no assistance or guidance before enrolling in this course:
During this five-day course, you focus on installing, configuring, and managing VMware Aria Automation 8.17 on- premises systems. You learn to use VMware Aria Automation to automate the delivery of virtual machines, applications, and personalized IT services across different data centers and hybrid cloud environments. The course covers how VMware Aria Automation Service Broker can aggregate content in native formats from multiple clouds and platforms into a common catalog.
This course also covers interfacing VMware Aria Automation with other systems using VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator and how to use VMware Aria Automation to manage Kubernetes systems and use other systems. In this course, you will use VMware® Aria Automation Config as a configuration management tool.
● VMware Aria Automation: Advanced Topics [v8.14]
- Course code: AAAT814.
- Duration: 5 days.
- Level of difficulty: Advanced.
- Target audience: Experienced system administrators and system integrators responsible for using VMware Aria Automation in advanced configurations in enterprise deployments.
- Prerequisites: This course requires completion of the following courses:
- VMware Aria Automation: Install, Configure, Manage [v8.17].
This five-day course is a follow-on to the VMware Aria Automation: Install, Configure, Manage course. During this course, you will take a deeper dive into advanced topics using features of VMware Aria Automation such as deploying user systems and interfacing Aria Automation with other platforms. You will also learn how to deploy a cluster environment using VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle and interface with, and use, vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes. This course makes heavy use of hands-on labs.
● VMware Aria Automation: Orchestration and Extensibility [V8.13]
- Course code: VAAOE13.
- Duration: 5 days.
- Level of difficulty: Advanced.
- Target audience: Experienced VMware Administrators, Automation and Orchestration Specialists, System Integrators, Private Cloud Administrators, Public Cloud Administrators.
- Prerequisites: Before taking this course, you should have completed the following course:
- VMware Aria Automation: Install, Configure, Manage [V8.17] course or equivalent knowledge.
During this five-day course, you focus on using VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator to extend the functionality of VMware Aria Automation. You learn how to provide XaaS (Anything as a Service) and implement machine lifecycle extensibility using the VMware Aria Automation Event Broker.
You also learn how to create VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator workflows and VMware Aria Automation ABX actions. You learn about various features, including basic scripting implementation along with logic processing to implement a variety of functions to use in your environment.
This course teaches implementing debugging, loops, conditions, and user interactions in VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator.
The course introduces the VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator HTML 5 interface, along with API calls and REST functions, to give you the groundwork to implement a variety of plug-ins and scripts.
This course is designed to give you the tools to craft custom solutions in the product.
Brief Summary
This article examined VMware Aria Automation as the automation and orchestration layer of VMware’s cloud management platform. We explored how blueprint-based service modeling, policy-driven governance, and extensible workflows enable standardized, repeatable provisioning of infrastructure and application services across vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation, and multi-cloud environments.
By integrating with VMware Aria Operations for intelligent placement and capacity awareness, and with VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle for standardized deployment and lifecycle management, Aria Automation establishes automation as a foundational operational capability. It enables organizations to balance self-service agility with centralized governance, accelerate application delivery, and implement unified automation frameworks for hybrid and multi-cloud strategies.
In the next article of the “VMware Training and Certification. Year 2025” series, we will shift our focus to the Network Virtualization learning domain and explore VMware NSX – VMware’s software-defined networking and security platform.
We will review the VMware NSX training programs, their architectural role within VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere environments, and how network virtualization enables microsegmentation, advanced security, and software-defined networking as a core layer of modern private, hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructures.
Follow the news until the meeting is on air in a few days.
Sincerely, AIRRA.
