Tagged: vra8

vRA8 Custom Properties – The Great Spring Clean

Of late I have been working on a number of Cloud Templates that require quite an extensive set of custom properties to be set. These custom properties are used to enable further configuration to take place during the deployment process. Additionally, some contain computed values that are then...

Jira integration with vRA8 Python ABX

I thought for a bit of a laugh I would challenge myself to create an ABX action to raise a Jira ticket when a deployment fails. In the end it wasn’t too difficult and it certainly shows that there could be some good further use cases for integration...

vRA 8.x Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet will evolve over time to become a single source for all the things you forget, common questions with answers and anything else that might be useful. Look out for other cheat sheets for other products as well (coming soon) ! Operations How do I shut...

Simple Testing of vRA Payloads in vRO

Something that I have had to do a lot of is working on subscription event based vRO workflows and ABX actions. The frustrating thing can be that you want to be able to develop in vRO using the vRA payload, without having to constantly ask vRA to create...

ABX Send Email via MS Exchange 2019 with Python

If you have reviewed some of my other posts here on automationpro.co.uk, you will know that I’m a fan of the ABX functionality in vRA8. Something that I have been wanting to accomplish for a while is sending an email from an ABX. There are some awesome posts...

Ansible & vRA integration in the palm of your hand

If you just want the script without the reading, download it here Integrating Ansible into vRA is a fantastic feature and not that hard to setup. VMware document the process themselves, and there are other numerous blog posts covering it as well, like this one or this one....

ABX Action – OpenSSH to a Windows Server

Recently I needed to create a connection to a Windows server and perform some operations on it. From there I wanted to run commands on the Windows server itself, and I didn’t want to have to worry about double hop WinRM issues from PowerShell. I wanted something flexible...

ABX Action Fails: ‘You are required to change your password immediately (password expired)’

Whilst working with a customer to provide extensibility through ABX actions, I came across a documented issue that I wasn’t previously aware of. Whilst testing an ABX action I received the following error message: abx-service [host=’abx-service-app-5c578445f7-j2w6m’ thread=’parallel-47′ user=” org=” trace=” component=’GatewayActionProvider’ method=’convertExceptions:437′ actionRunI d=’8a7480a179b68ffb0179e552568b1e1a’ context=’87aad62e-0d90-4a61-b265-8b3720239a00′ tokenId=’8eb4435a-be1f-4921-9ca3-d809625dce4c’ parentTokenId=’8bdaa86c-1a01-4714-8c8f-9b1d41a5d98f’] c.v.a.a.p.i.g.Gate...

ABX DNS management with Python

I have been playing around with vra8 actions for a while now and whilst it is a handy function, I have found some issues with the PowerShell implementation. However, Python based actions seem to execute just fine. Whilst playing around I came across what looked like a really...

Backup Your Code Stream Pipelines.. With A Pipeline!

Introduction In this post I will be providing you with a Code Stream pipeline that is capable of exporting all pipelines in your Code Stream instance, committing them into a GitHub repository and pushing the commits back to GitHub.   Assumptions I have made a few assumptions that...

vRA 8.3 REST Api Calls With Code Stream

Introduction In this post I will be providing an example of how to make REST API calls from Code Stream obtain an API token from the vRA 8.3 REST api obtain a list of Cloud Accounts registered with vRA filter for a specific Cloud Account on vRA  ...

VMware vRA 8.3 and Puppet Enterprise Integration Configuration

Having installed Puppet Enterprise in my home lab I decided I should hook it up to my vRA 8.3 installation using the native integration feature. Doing a quick Google search yielded a clear and simple blog post that outlined how to configure it for vRA 8.1. Following this...

Extensibility & PowerShell – Playing the Property Game

Recently I have been having some fun and games with vRA 8.2, in particular, with the extensibility capabilities. With the introduction of PowerShell support for vRA actions, I thought I would have a little play and see what I could break. I’m On A MetaData Hunt.. Ok, so...

Terraform – In Action with VMware vRA 8.x

Of late I have been playing with Terraform and the vRA 8 provider. Although I have found quite a few bugs with the provider (I’ll log those soon) it certainly is a great start! I have captured a quick demo below where I configure settings on a brand...

Postman Samples For vRA 8

Attached to this post you will find a JSON file that can be imported into Postman.  The import will give you a collection called ‘AutomationPro-vRA8’ which contains 19 example requests for using against a VMware vRA 8 install. Although there are many more requests that can be made,...

VMware vRA8 – Are People Missing The Point?

Since the announcement of VMware vRealize 8, migration has been a popular topic. I don’t mean deployment of vRA8 itself; that is handled [editor: very nicely I might add] by the new version of VMware Lifecycle Manager. Follow the wizard and sooner rather than later you will have...

VMware vRA8 – Adding Microsoft Azure As A Cloud Zone

VMware vRealize Automation 8 is a leap forwards and certainly a far cry from what we all knew as vRealize Automation 7.x. A new code base with a new look, if you have any familiarity with VMware vRealize Automation Cloud (formerly Cloud Automation Services) software as a service...