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emacintosh
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VRA 8.1 CustomizeMachine Event Topic

We have a need to configure some advanced setting on a vm after it's cloned but before it's powered on.  To accomplish this in 7.5, we run our workflow during the "PRE" phase of the "CloneWorkflow.CustomizeMachine" lifecycle state.

In 8.1, it seems like like we go from the "compute.provision.pre" topic (before the clone starts) to "compute.provision.post" topic (after the vm is powered on).  Is there any way to gain access to a state between the two? 

The settings we need to apply affect network connectivity and I believe need to be applied before the customization begins.

Any help is appreciated.  Thanks!

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cdoola11
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Would like to know the advanced settings that you are trying to set on VM, just to see if there is another way to set it like through custom properties.

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emacintosh
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Thanks for the reply.  Our SDN is provided by nuage and we configure the 7 nic-specific settings they require, e.g. nuage.nic0.domain, nuage.nic0.ip, etc.  See the link below for a table of them all.

https://nuagenetworks.github.io/2016/03/25/Migrating-ESXi-Workloads-to-Nuage.html#pre-provision-nuag...https://nuagenetworks.github.io/2016/03/25/Migrating-ESXi-Workloads-to-Nuage.html#pre-provision-nuag...

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cdoola11
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You may try with below order.

1. Do event subscription to start below workflow for event "Deployment resource requested"

2. Create a workflow to check VM status at VCenter and apply settings when you find the desired status.

This may be workaround that is possible at this moment.

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emacintosh
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I can try to play with that idea.  I won't have all of the info I need at that time, but I could probably get it with the properties that I will have.  I would have thought that the topic would wait until until its subscriptions finished before the next topic would kick off though...but I can test.  Thanks for the suggestion. 

We also opened a ticket and will see if vmware has any ideas, which I can share back here as well.

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cdoola11
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Use Asynchronous Workflow element in the workflow that you are calling from Event subscription.

emacintosh
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Support (and the devs) confirmed that there is no equivalent 8.1 event topic for this 7.5 lifecycle phase.  But it has been added as a feature request.

In the meantime, I'll be testing the async workflow that will check the vm events and attempt to make these changes at the same time as the lifecycle phase.  It may just take me a bit to get there.

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emacintosh
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Well as a concept, this approach works.  Meaning, I can launch an async workflow that checks for the state of the vm.  Once the vm exists, it configures the advanced settings that we need.  But it may still be too late, as some of the settings don't get configured until after the VM starts - it's just a matter of timing, and I don't think there's much we can do about that.

I'll need to verify if that is an issue or if nuage will still be able to provide network connectivity even if some settings aren't configured until after the vm is starting.  But it's still not ideal.  I'm going to keep looking for other options, but not getting my hopes up.

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