vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Using the vCAC Test Agent

Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

If you have installed the vSphere Proxy agent when connecting vCAC to vCenter you may have seen the option to select the “Test Agent”. The test agent is extremely useful if you are developing custom workflows, modifying workflow stubs in the designer, or just don’t have enough resources to test against.

How does the test agent work?

It’s pretty simple once you install the test agent you can create a fictitious host. You can then create reservations from your fictitious host. The test agent is designed so that when a requested machine is deployed against a reservation that is backed by fictitious host it steps through the machine lifecycle with a successful response for each state. So essentially it makes vCAC think the machine was provisioned and customized etc. This allows you to still execute your custom workflows and if they fail, it will throw back a failure, but you don’t have to worry about waiting for a machine to clone.

How do you set it up?

1. First you need to install the Test Proxy agent and you can do that by following the steps for “Installing vSphere Proxy Agent” in my post vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Connecting to vCenter. Don’t create an endpoint, just follow the agent installation instructions and select the “Test Agent” instead of the vSphere agent.

 

2. After the agent is installed you need to edit the agent config file located at “C:\Program Files (x86)\DynamicOps\DCAC Agents\{Test_Agent-Folder}\VRMAgent.exe.config. Inside the file you want to find the line that starts with
   DynamicOps.Vrm.Agent.TestAgent SimpleMode=”False”, and change the SimpleMode to equal True. Once completed save the file and restart the Test Agent Service.

 

3. Once you have installed the test agent and edited the config file login to vCAC and go to the “vCAC Administrator” menu and select “Agent Configuration“. In the drop down list next to “Proxy Agent Name” you should see the name you gave your “Test Agent“. Select it and then enter a name for “Compute Resource” and click “OK“.

 

4. Next you need to go to the “vCAC Administrator” menu and select “Enterprise Groups“. You can either edit an existing group, or add another group. Either way you want to assign the “Compute Resource” that you just created in the agent config to an Enterprise Group. So under “Compute Resources” select the name you entered on the agent configuration step above and click “OK” to save.

 

5. Now just like any other “Compute Resource” vCAC is going to perform a data collection against the newly assign resource. The agent will respond and provide fictitious resources for the “Compute Resource“. Once this is complete you can create a reservation and provision machines against your fake resources.

 
Note: If you want to create more than one fake compute resource simply restart the test agent service and then repeat steps 3-5. There is currently a minor bug that requires you to perform the restart of the agent. You can create as many fake resources as you like with different names with just one test agent.

If you have any questions or need assistance or have done something really cool with the test agent post it on our forum site under Using the vCAC test Agent.

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