In vRA 7 you could remove a VM from portal management (leaving the VM in vCenter) by using the “Unregister” day 2 action. There is no such action in vRA 8. There is also no way to remove the VM using the API without it being deleted from vCenter. Fortunately there is a way but it involves directly editing data within the postgres database in the postgres pod. Accessing the postgres kubernetes pod and directly…
17 CommentsThere are a couple of ways you can install vRA8 and this post will summarise them along with providing links to my other blog posts which go through the processes in detail. Easy Installer This is the easiest way to install vRA8 so the name is quite apt 🙂 There are however some limitations using this method. Firstly it will only install a single vIDM node, you will have to manual scale this out post…
Leave a CommentI experienced this issue when working on a particular platform, it was a weird one so thought I would document it. The Issue I had a Windows Server 2019 template that I had created and tested deploying within vCenter, no issues at all. I then proceeded to create a blueprint in vRA (vRealize Automation) to allow Windows Server 2019 VMs to be built. Tested a build and failed (timed out and deleted). Windows was just…
Leave a CommentAllowing users to create snapshots against VMs using vRA (vRealize Automation) is great, however left unchecked could cause an issue with snapshots growing too large. I created a vRO workflow that can delete snapshots after they expire. Set the workflow to run on a schedule and never worry about snapshots growing too large ever again. Instructions Download the dev.vautomation.expiredsnapshots.package zip file below Extract the zip file to get the vRO (vRealize Orchestrator) package file Import…
2 CommentsCustom properties (or property definitions) in vRA (vRealize Automation) are very flexible, allowing you to store information against a VM. These custom properties can be used to filter on event subscriptions or the values can be extracted and used within vRO (vRealize Orchestrator) workflows and actions. The downside is once these custom properties have been set during a build they are not easy to change, not to mention if you create new custom properties they…
Leave a CommentEvent subscriptions in vRA (vRealize Automation) are very flexible, allowing you to customise more or less anything you want using vRO (vRealize Orchestrator) code. Since event subscriptions are created in each tenant they can be a bit of a nightmare to manage, especially when things need to change and all tenants should have the same subscriptions. I created a couple of vRO workflows that can “Get” and “Set” event subscriptions via the vRA API. This…
Leave a CommentvRealize Automation (vRA) 8 has arrived but it might as well be called something else, it is that different to previous versions. The first and probably major difference to mention is the architecture. Previous versions involved having the vRA appliance (running postgres) and Windows servers including a Microsoft SQL database running the IaaS components. vRA 8 combines all these components into a single appliance running kubernetes containers. You can see the VMware reference diagram below…
Leave a CommentEver wanted to hide the domain drop down on a vRA (vRealize Automation) tenant login page? This vRO (vRealize Orchestrator) package contains a workflow and actions to allow just that, making vRA (vRealize Automation) more secure and user friendly. Running the workflow will change your tenant login page from this: to this: Instructions Download the dev.vautomation.tenantlogin.package zip file below Extract the zip file to get the vRO (vRealize Orchestrator) package file Import the vRO (vRealize…
Leave a CommentThis tutorial will explain how to setup VMware NSX. NSX 6.4.0 was used for this tutorial, other NSX versions follow the same setup but you may notice some differences as you go along. 1) Deploy the NSX Manager OVA using vCenter (it doesn’t have to be deployed in the same vCenter you will be using it in). Select the relevant Cluster, VM Folder, Storage & Network (for management of NSX Manager) settings in the OVA…
Leave a CommentI experienced this issue when working on a particular platform, it was a weird one and took some trial and error to fix so thought I would document it. The Issue When trying to view a NSX XaaS provisioned item it would just display a blank white page. Also if a resource (day 2) action was attempted on the provisioned item a red ‘internal error’ box would be displayed and so the resource (day 2)…
Leave a Comment