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GarTomlon
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vRA Workflow with XAAS to Payload

I have a vRA blueprint with a vSphere VM and an XAAS component.  It simply has two dropdown boxes (selections that are made in each box is an array).  I have a event broker subscription that runs (for this blueprint) for POST activation of the VM.   The vRO workflow for this subscription has a PAYLOAD input param.  I need to get the two selection box values in PAYLOAD as well.  How is this done?  I have the properties and values for the VM, but those dropdown bloxes are not listed anywhere.  Any help is appreciated.
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daphnissov
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If they're part of the XaaS item I don't think they can be part of the  machine's payload because they aren't applicable there.

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NuggetGTR
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

What is the XaaS component for?

there is a number of ways to go about it.

________________________________________ Blog: http://virtualiseme.net.au VCDX #201 Author of Mastering vRealize Operations Manager
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GarTomlon
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The XAAS I have created is two selection boxes.  The first Selection box is a selection of the Tag Categories in vSphere.  The user can select the desired categories of Tags.  The second Selection Box  is populated with the tags available from the selected Categories.  The user can select the desired tags that they would like to be applied to the VM.  This XAAS is placed on the blueprint after the vSphere VM object.  After the VM is deployed and POST active, that was when the EBS runs.  Now, I know that you are going to say that SovLabs has a Tagging module.  I am aware of that.  Lets just say, that is not an option at this time.  You say that the XAAS data cant be part of PAYLOAD.  If not, how can I construct this so that I can select the tags and pass to Orchestrator?    

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daphnissov
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Actually, I was going to suggest that you build these as Actions that then are bound to a custom property definition present at the deployment level. This way, they would be part of the payload and could still be written out in the POST phase.

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Hejahida82
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I agree with daphnissov, I've done it that way (custom properties on IaaS blueprint) for a customer before. Two properties, one for the category which has a static list of values and one for the tag names which is populated by vRO action. Bind the category input of the vRO action to the value selected by the user in the first drop down box and it will return a list of Tag names from vCenter that belong to that category.

Then in Machine Provisioned POST retrieve the value for the tag selected by the user from the payload and apply the tag to the VM.

In my case I used vAPI to retrieve the tags and apply them to the VM in vCenter.

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GarTomlon
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I had thought about that using custom properties with actions.  What got me away from that, is should we add more categories (and we will), the static list will have to be updated.  Not a big thing at all. But, just trying to keep this dynamic.  Unless there is a way to update that static list dynamically within vRA.    
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daphnissov
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But there is no static list here. All actions poll the live vCenter and inventory of tags, so an addition of a category or tag should be returned by the action next time it is invoked.

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Hejahida82
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Just to clarify in my example we used a static list for the categories as there were only two of them and it was a PoC. You can however use a vRO action to return a list of categories directly from vCenter so you don't have to use a static list as daphnissov​ has pointed out.

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GarTomlon
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Quick question.  In my XAAS I had created.  I have my two inputs params set as Array/String so I can select multiple cats and tags.  I set teh property Predefined Answers to my action.  Now, with using custom properties in my blueprint, created the custom property and set to dropdownlist.  I   set the scriptable task to the same action as my Presentation in my workflow.  However, when I place it in my blueprint, the dropdown list is present, however it is a single selection.  How can I select multiple items?
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GarTomlon
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Just to clear it up with the XAAS/vRO workflow, with the multiple input params and actions set to the Predefined Answers, it allows me to select multiple items in the cats and tags.  Using just the actions in the vRA, how can I achieve the same thing? 
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