vra  


Getting Started with the vRealize Automation REST API

I've been doing a bit of work lately to make my vRealize Automation setup more flexible and dynamic and less dependent upon hardcoded values. To that end, I thought it was probably about time to learn how to interact with the vRA REST API. I wrote this post to share what I've learned and give a quick crash course on how to start doing things with the API. Exploration Toolkit Swagger It can be difficult to figure out where to start when learning a new API.

Fixing 403 error on SaltStack Config 8.6 integrated with vRA and vIDM

I've been wanting to learn a bit more about SaltStack Config so I recently deployed SSC 8.6 to my environment (using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to do so as described here). I selected the option to integrate with my pre-existing vRA and vIDM instances so that I wouldn't have to manage authentication directly since I recall that the LDAP authentication piece was a little clumsy the last time I tried it.

Run scripts in guest OS with vRA ABX Actions

Thus far in my vRealize Automation project, I've primarily been handing the payload over to vRealize Orchestrator to do the heavy lifting on the back end. This approach works really well for complex multi-part workflows (like when generating unique hostnames), but it may be overkill for more linear tasks (such as just running some simple commands inside of a deployed guest OS). In this post, I'll explore how I use vRA Action Based eXtensibility (ABX) to do just that.

Notes on vRA HA with NSX-ALB

This is going to be a pretty quick recap of the steps I recently took to convert a single-node instance of vRealize Automation 8.4.2 into a 3-node High-Availability vRA cluster behind a standalone NSX Advanced Load Balancer (without NSX being deployed in the environment). No screenshots or specific details since I ran through this in the lab at work and didn't capture anything along the way, and my poor NUC homelab struggles enough to run a single instance of memory-hogging vRA.

Creating static records in Microsoft DNS from vRealize Automation

One of the requirements for my vRA deployments is the ability to automatically create a static A records for non-domain-joined systems so that users can connect without needing to know the IP address. The organization uses Microsoft DNS servers to provide resolution on the internal domain. At first glance, this shouldn't be too much of a problem: vRealize Orchestrator 8.x can run PowerShell scripts, and PowerShell can use the Add-DnsServerResourceRecord cmdlet to create the needed records.

Joining VMs to Active Directory in site-specific OUs with vRA8

Connecting a deployed Windows VM to an Active Directory domain is pretty easy; just apply an appropriately-configured customization spec and vCenter will take care of it for you. Of course, you'll likely then need to move the newly-created computer object to the correct Organizational Unit so that it gets all the right policies and such. Fortunately, vRA 8 supports adding an Active Directory integration to handle staging computer objects in a designated OU.

Adding VM Notes and Custom Attributes with vRA8

In past posts, I started by creating a basic deployment infrastructure in Cloud Assembly and using tags to group those resources. I then wrote an integration to let vRA8 use phpIPAM for static address assignments. I implemented a vRO workflow for generating unique VM names which fit an organization's established naming standard, and then extended the workflow to avoid any naming conflicts in Active Directory and DNS. And, finally, I created an intelligent provisioning request form in Service Broker to make it easy for users to get the servers they need.

vRA8 Automatic Deployment Naming - Another Take

A few days ago, I shared how I combined a Service Broker Custom Form with a vRO action to automatically generate a unique and descriptive deployment name based on user inputs. That approach works fine but while testing some other components I realized that calling that action each time a user makes a selection isn't necessarily ideal. After a bit of experimentation, I settled on what I believe to be a better solution.

vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Four

My last post in this series marked the completion of the vRealize Orchestrator workflow that I use for pre-provisioning tasks, namely generating a unique sequential hostname which complies with a defined naming standard and doesn't conflict with any existing records in vSphere, Active Directory, or DNS. That takes care of many of the "back-end" tasks for a simple deployment. This post will add in some "front-end" operations, like creating a customized VM request form in Service Broker and dynamically populating a drop-down with a list of networks available at the user-selected deployment site.

vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Three

Picking up after Part Two, I now have a pretty handy vRealize Orchestrator workflow to generate unique hostnames according to a defined naming standard. It even checks against the vSphere inventory to validate the uniqueness. Now I'm going to take it a step (or two, rather) further and extend those checks against Active Directory and DNS. Active Directory Adding an AD endpoint Remember how I used the built-in vSphere plugin to let vRO query my vCenter(s) for VMs with a specific name?

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 jbowdre