VCAC/VCO integration - "workflow template"

[SatishPatil]

Hi All,

One way to extend VCAC/VCO is by making VCAC call VCO workflows during state change. You make a copy of "Workflow template" and do other integration so that it gets called by the blueprint. The question is the "Workflow Template" has number of input parameters vCACVm, vCenterVM etc. How these are getting set by VCAC as nothing was done by me on the blueprint.

Any help appreciated.

[stvkpln]

I can answer that question on where the values come from, but before I do... I'm going to ask if you're 100% certain you REALLY want the answer.... You may just want to count your blessings and use the workflow template as the starting point for creating your various state change workflows, and just accept that those values get populated.

[Dan_Linsley]

I was going to describe how this all works for you, but there are several great posts already on it.  First, Checkout:

Extend vCAC 6 IaaS Lifecycle with vCO introduction video

Running vCO Workflows from vCAC during the provisioning of a Virtual Machine — Virtual Nebula

What master workflow state are you looking to run your vCO workflow?

[SatishPatil]

Hi Dan, I am familiar with integration between VCO & VCAC. I was not sure how parameters are getting populated when "workflow Template" is used as the flow.

Steve, let me know how it works.

[stvkpln · Accepted solution]

Ok... so, basically.. here's what happens. When you run the workflow to setup the vCO Customizations in vCAC, what happens is that the stub workflows in IaaS get reconfigured to point to the State Workflows within vCO under the path Library -> vCloud Automation Center -> Infrastructure Administration -> Extensibility -> Workflow stubs. Each of these workflows execute more or less the same thing / the same way, but with one distinction: they have a defined attribute for the state (externalWFStub). These workflows are the "shells" for everything else that will happen and only have a single input: the ID of the VM in vCAC. From there, the following happens:

1. Executes the Prepare Workflow run workflow. This workflow will go back and get the vCAC VM Entity, which will then lead to getting the vCAC Host and the vCAC VM objects. There's other stuff that happens here, but I'm not getting into all of it, as it isn't pertinent to your question (and you should really look into this yourself and poke around).
2. Executes the Workflow runner workflow. This workflow will go and populate the vCAC VM's properties, resolve the vCenter / vCloud VM, and it will then execute the workflow specified for the blueprint, passing along those specific values.

If you want to know the specific code and how it's all tied together, you can investigate those two workflows and poke around. They're part of the vCAC Plugin, so you won't be able to edit (and thus, break) them.

Enjoy the knowledge.

-Steve

[SatishPatil]

I went through IaaS Designer and StubWorkflow. Now it is not magic any more. Thanks Steve.

[stvkpln]

No worries; glad I could help. It took me a bit of time to untangle that whole mess.