vRealize pre-provisioning hostname check

[echolette]

Hi everyone,

We just took over an existing vRealize Automation Center environment and i'm trying to figure out if it's possible to have vRealize check Active Directory or at least DNS records for a hostname to avoid deploying a VM causing duplicate names on the network. I know it remembers about the system it deployed, but I would need it to check outside of its list of managed systems.

I was looking into Orchestrator Workflows but haven't had any luck so far.

Can an Orchestrator Workflow be used to check the network and cancel a vCAC deployment? Or maybe i missed a feature inside vCAC itself?

Thanks!!

[eoinbyrne · Accepted solution]

In terms of figuring out if a name exists already you can do things like the following in vRO

- scan the vSphere inventory for matching names

- scan the vRA inventory for matching machine names

- search in AD for a computer account (though this is no guarantee that the machine still exists - depending on how AD is managed)

- ping a specific hostname via the Powershell or SSH plugins

- use nslookup to check DNS via Powershell / SSH

Lots of ways

For the second part of your question, you have some choices

- Use an advanced service and put the name check before the machine request is submitted

or

- Use the extensibility customizations to put a name check in the BuildingMachine phase of the IaaS master workflow & fail if the machine name exists

The first one is cleaner as the user can't submit a request for a machine name that exists

In terms of pre-canned workflows for this stuff there are some examples in the vCAC plugin package but you will need to write custom workflows for a chunk of it

-Eoin

[echolette]

Thanks so much for your help.

I'll be working on that today and the next couple of days.

Sorry it took so long for me to write back in here. Really appreciate it!