vCAC and vCO for VM cloud deployment

[Aristizabal]

Hello,

I  have done some vCloud director automation using vCenter Orchestrator, so I can provision VMs in an organization and then run post installation tasks. Then I started looking at vCenter Automation Center to provide a front end to the user as well as capabilities like VM deployment approvals. Everything works fine and vCAC does the job fine, but I would like to integrate my vCO provisioning workflows for vCloud director so they get invoked from vCAC when a user requests a new VM.

Using the vCAC designer there is an option to call a vCO workflow, but how can I add this workflow to vCAC as a provisioning workflow?. My only option for creating a blueprint from a vCloud director endpoint is "CloneWorkflow". So, if the VM is created through vCO how can guarantee that the resource will be managed by vCAC?.

Thank you.

Juan.

[VirExprt]

Hey Juan,

Using vCAC designer, which is a basic designer, you cannot convert the vCO workflow to provisioning Workflow only you can call the vCO workflow using custom option in already existing 10 workflow. However if you call your vCO workflow and that vCO workflow has some required input parameters which needs to be provided while workflow initiation, is not possible in this scenario because this call method does not pass input parameter filed to vCAC portal for user intervention.

In order to get it working, you compulsorily have to provide all input parameter at workflow modification level. Which is no fun of just clicking a button and see machine provisioning with pre-populated parameters.

To get workflow be working from vCAC as desired, I guess you need cloud Development kit license.

Br,

MG

[Aristizabal]

Thanks MG, I was hoping to reuse all the logic I already have in vCO workflows from vCAC.... Now, if I have a vCO workflow can I pass variables from vCAC so my vCO workflow doesn't have to prompt the user for anything? are you aware of any source of examples for this other than the extensibility guide?

[VirExprt]

Hey ,

if you are fine with hard coding parameters in workflow from vCAC while attaching it as menu item with vCAC, it will work fine. however, if you are looking for dynamic parameters which contain different value everytime, this approach will not be fesiable solution.

Extensibility guide is the only one which i am also looking into...

Br,

MG

[Aristizabal]

Thanks MG, I am also reviewing the extensibility guide. Here is a good link with some information related to vCAC and Powershell/vCO:

http://clearascloud.blogspot.ca/2013/02/powershell-scripting-out-of-vcac.html

Juan.

[vmwaredownload]

Thanks Juan,

    I'm encountering the same problem. I had all my VCO workflows working including approval and cost calculation. The only thing which did not please the management was the interface. VCAC provides good interface but it would have been great if we could have better VCO integration.

Regards,

Rajesh

[Aristizabal]

I went through the same path of vCO -> vCAC specially for the need of a user interface. I am still working on getting the integration with vCO correctly but check this post about running vCO workflows as part of the machine provisioning cycle.

http://clearascloud.blogspot.ca/2013/03/vmware-vco-workflows-integration-with.html

Juan.

[cdecanini_]

If you just need to pass a

You can call a vCO workflow passing the virtualMachineId in one of the 6 vCAC workflow stub or 4 menu operations. In vCO you create a workflow with a virtualMachineID input.

On the vCO side you can use the vCAC plug-in to covert the virtual machine ID to a vCAC VM object like this:

//Find VirtualMachine Entity from virtualMachine ID
var vCACVirtualMachines = Server.findAllForType("vCAC:VirtualMachine"); 

//vCAC VM
var vCACVM = null;
for each (var vCACVirtualMachine in vCACVirtualMachines) {
    if (vCACVirtualMachine.virtualMachineID == virtualMachineId) {
        vCACVM = vCACVirtualMachine;
        break;
    }
}

System.log(vCACVM);

With the vCAC VM object you have access to all its properties that you can pass to your vCO workflow.