VMware vRealize Automation – vRA7 – Custom Hostnaming Extension for vRA7 and beyond

THIS EXTENSION IS NO LONGER MAINTAINED

I want to thank all of you that have downloaded and used this module. We never expected it to be as widely used as it has been. We decided to stop maintaining this because it was originally built as an example of how one could achieve this capability. Much to our surprise it has been deployed into countless production environments. As a result we have received countless requests for support which we cannot provide.

Their is good news however. Their is a commercially available supported product that is capable to doing much more than this module is capable of. For more information See article on SovLabs Hostname Module

Overview

One of the most frequent asks when using vRA is, “How do I deploy machines using my company’s hostnaming standards automatically using vRA?” Since the out-of-the box hostnaming only provides a way to do prefix-suffix, the answer to this question usually is that it will require customization.

This solution is intended to provide a way to implement this functionality by using a small, highly versatile custom extension which can handle 95% of use cases without writing custom code.

The rest of this article contains instructions on installing and configuring the vRA Custom Hostnaming Extension. This extension allows administrators to model very specific custom hostnaming schemes for their vRA virtual machines, Deployments, and vCloud Director vApps using vRA custom properties, with dynamic creation of stock machine prefixes and index tracking for each unique hostname combination.

This extension is proof-of-concept or demo grade. While it runs well and consistently, it has not been put through a formal quality assurance process, so please use with caution.

Continue reading “VMware vRealize Automation – vRA7 – Custom Hostnaming Extension for vRA7 and beyond”

March 12, 2015

vRealize Orchestrator – vRO 6.0.1 is now available!

vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.1 is now available. This is exciting especially of your are running vRA 6.2 and would like to deploy an external vRO server. That of course is just one of the benefits of the new vRO 6.0,1 release. Below is additional new features with this release:

What’s new?

With this release vRealize Orchestrator introduces a more flexible content delivery mechanism due to increased workflow development efficiency and a new troubleshooting experience. Workflow developers benefit from a more programming-free design experience provided by the new control flow activities and error handling mechanism. Workflow execution and monitoring is easier when using the new administrative interface. vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.1 introduces better configuration options for vSphere 6.0, by using a unified page for configuring vCenter Single Sign-On authentication, licensing, and vCenter component registry. The stability of the vCenter Server plug-in has been improved by resolving major issues based on customer feedback.

vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.1 has an updated model for installing the vSphere Web Client plug-in for vRealize Orchestrator. vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.1 supports the vSphere Web Client integration and context execution of vRealize Orchestrator workflows as part of vSphere Web Client 6.0.

Continue reading “vRealize Orchestrator – vRO 6.0.1 is now available!”

December 8, 2014

vRealize Automation – vCAC 6.1 – Ultimate Multi-Machine Blueprint Extension v1.0.2 – Updated

Have you ever needed more control over what custom properties get assigned to specific component machines of a multi-machine blueprint, or want to use the same component blueprints for all component machine of a multi-machine blueprint? The Ultimate Multi-Machine Blueprint Extension aims to help with that.

The Ultimate Multi-Machine Blueprint Extension allows you to utilize the same source component blueprint for multiple component machines while at the same time controlling which custom propertied get assigned to each of the components. This allows you customize each of them differently during deployment.

This extension works well with the Custom Hostname and the Custom vCenter Folders extension to round out the use of Multi-Machine Blueprints.

Example Use Cases:

Use a single machine blueprint for all components of a multi-tiered multi-machine blueprint and customize the name of each component.
Use a single machine blueprint for all components of a multi-tiered multi-machine blueprint and customize the guest agent actions of each component machine.
Use a single machine blueprint for all components of a multi-tiered multi-machine blueprint and override the template for each component to deploy from a different source vCenter template for each component.

The goal of this extension is to limit blueprint sprawl and leverage the multi-machine construct to customize the component machines and rely less on customizing the single machine blueprints making them more re-usable.

This extension was designed and built as a collective effort by Tom Bonanno and Sid Smith. If you have any feedback please let us know.

Features

Define which component machines to apply custom properties to in a multi-machine blueprint.
Utilize a singular blueprint for all component machines in a multi-machine blueprint.

Change Log

v1.0.2

Fixed bug that caused properties with Multiple periods not to be processed properly.

v1.0.1

Initial Release

Remember we have performed a large amount of testing, but this is a v1.0 extension so please test and let us know if you find any issues.

Continue reading “vRealize Automation – vCAC 6.1 – Ultimate Multi-Machine Blueprint Extension v1.0.2 – Updated”

February 27, 2014

vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.2/6.0 – Custom Hostnaming Extension v3.1

Overview

One of the most frequent asks when using vCAC is, “How do I deploy machines using my company’s hostnaming standards automatically using vCAC?” Since the out-of-the box hostnaming only provides a way to do prefix-suffix, the answer to this question usually is that it will require customization.

This solution is intended to provide a way to implement this functionality by using a small, highly versatile custom extension which can handle 95% of use cases without writing custom code.

The rest of this article contains instructions on installing and configuring the vCAC Custom Hostnaming Extension. This extension allows administrators to model very specific custom hostnaming schemes for their vCAC virtual machines, multi-machine services, and vCloud Director vApps using vCAC custom properties, with dynamic creation of stock machine prefixes and index tracking for each unique hostname combination.

This extension is Continue reading “vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.2/6.0 – Custom Hostnaming Extension v3.1”

May 31, 2013

vCloud Automation Center – vCAC – Workflow and Script to Change CPU’s to Cores

During a POC something was brought to my attention that I haven’t heard anyone ask for before, but it seems like a very useful and valid need. The ask was to be able to set CPU Cores during provisioning rather than CPU’s. Operating Systems and other apps license by sockets, not cores so instead of having 8 CPU Sockets with 1 core, why not have 1 CPU Socket with 8 Cores. So I decided to build a solution that would solve this and change the CPU Sockets to Cores.

Now I prefer to do as much as I can in the design center and with the WorkFlow stubs because then they will work for everyone without the need for the CDK so taking that into consideration here is what I have built.

Background Info:

I am executing my script at the MachineProvisioned state of the virtual machines lifecycle. This can mean different things based on the provisioning type that is selected. If we are talking about cloning then it means that the clone has finished, vCAC hardware customization has taken place, Customization Specification has executed, any operation performed by the guest agent are complete and the VM for all intents is complete.Using the WFStubMachineProvisioned workflow however I can perform additional operations before the machine is handed off to the owner. In this case I’m using the workflow stub to execute a powershell script named SocketsToCores.
Continue reading “vCloud Automation Center – vCAC – Workflow and Script to Change CPU’s to Cores”

April 16, 2013

vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Workflow Designer Walk-Through – Add Computer Account to Active Directory OU

OK so in this article we are going to create our first workflow that executes a powershell script that adds a computer account to active directory in whatever OU you would like it to be placed in. Our Powershell script will get loaded in to the Model Manager Repository and we will modify the “MachineRequested” workflow stub to execute our script. Then we will use the workflow stub property to determine for which VM’s we want want the workflow stub to execute.

Dependencies

Active Directory Module for Powershell

Open the Powershell Console
Run “Import-Module ServerManager”
Run “Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-AD-Powershell”

Installation

Create Powershell Script
First thing we need to do is create our powershell script. The script that we will need has to do a few things. It needs to pull values from vCAC that will be used to add the machine to AD. The values we are going to pull are Hostname, DNSDomain, & Active Directory OU. We will use the Hostname and DNSDomain to create the FQDN for the server. The code for the script is below or you can just download it from here.
## Assign Custom Properties from vCAC to variables to be utilized as part of our script. ## Script created by Sid Smith http://www.dailyhypervisor.com Continue reading "vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Workflow Designer Walk-Through – Add Computer Account to Active Directory OU"