VRA Shutting itself down

[RichardSillito]

Now before you say "What an idiot!" let me say that I would totally agree with you!!  :smileylaugh:

I created a shutdown workflow to shutdown my lab and forgot to exclude the orchestrator engine that I am using (it's an embedded orchestrator inside of a VRA). So the workflow got to the VRA appliance and did the task to shut it down. This of course stopped the workflow as the appliance shutdown. Now when I start up the appliance it resumes the workflow and of course the first thing it does is shuts down the appliance. Did I tell you I know that I'm an idiot?

Is there a way to start VRA but tell it to cancel any outstanding workflows?

[iiliev · Accepted solution]

One option to not resume workflows on vRO server startup is to add the following line to file /etc/vco/app-server/vmo.properties

ch.dunes.safe-mode=true

So you need to be quick and manage to make this change right after you start the appliance but before vRO server starts up and shuts down the appliance.

Another option would be to directly delete workflow execution from the database. A third option would be to play with startup scripts (Linux/vRA/vRO) and disable vRO server service.

[RichardSillito]

I did finally get this sorted out, but in a different way. I rebooted the appliance and watched for the vco-server to start, I then quickly shut it down with the following command

service vco-server stop

Then I left it over night and then attempted to start it again, it looks like the appliance being up allowed the workflow engine to believe that the workflow had failed and thus it did not run it. The weird part is that it has been marked failed but gives no reason why, nothing in events, logs and no message in variables.

As for Ilian's solution, I suspect that would have worked, so I am going to mark it correct, I will test it later and provide an update if necessary.

To help avoid this in the future, I am going to create a new folder called core components; rather then the earlier approach of maintaining an exclusion list. This way it more visual in the vcenter.

Thanks to Ilian for responding so quickly.

Take care

RS

[ivand]

You can use an option in workflow. Set this workflow to not resume after restart. Do this from General tab. Set property Server restart behavior to Do not resume workflow run

[RichardSillito]

I will most definitely set that as it would have prevented the problem in the first place.

RS