Grouping resources faster in vCOPs

[TheVMinator]

If I want to group a bunch of resources together in the Custom UI under a common resource tag, I have to select them individually.  This is fine if I want 5 vms to be part of a resource tag.  What if I want 200 VMs to be part of the tag? With powercli I can do things like import a csv with the names, or do customized searches with powerCLI scripts.  I don't see a way to do this for example in Enviornment -> Overview.  It is my understanding that currently scripting is not supported with vCOps.  What options are there to speed things up?  I can do a search for a part of a name in the "search" box but that is still extremely slow.  Can I import a list of resources as an XML or CSV file into the vCOPs custom UI?

[mark_j]

I would disagree, in that you can select multiple resources and drag them to a resource tag. I do this regularly. I just did it again to confirm.

[TheVMinator]

OK.  I didn't phrase my question clearly.  Yes I can move multiple resources to a resource tag at the same time.

However, here is the scenario:

Suppose I have 3000 VMs in my enviornment.  I want to move all VMs that belong to a specific business unit (marketing) to a resource tag.  I know that there are 300 of them.  I have a csv file that lists all the VMs I want to move to the resource tag.  They don't necessarily have a consistent naming format so that I can search for a common string in the VM name.    The VMs are spread abroad different clusters, datacenters and sites.

The problem is I have to pore through a list of 3000 VMs, select the ones I need one by one, choosing only the VMs I want and not selecting the others.  Once I have selected only the ones I want, I can certainly move them as a group on to the resource tag.  The problem is how long it takes me to do that.

If I could upload a csv or xml file with a set of VMs defined that are to be part of a resource tag, it would speed up this process greatly.  With PowerCLI and vCenter, I could do that easily, I could select only the VMs I wanted and do whatever I wanted - for example move them into a particular folder.

Since vCOps has no scripting access, I have to manually click on every VM I want to be part of the group.  After I manually click on them I can move them as a group onto the resource tag, but the whole process is still very slow compared to what I can do with scripting in vCenter.  There has got to be a better way or hopefully one is in development?

[mark_j]

What you're looking for is accomplished today with a vCO workflow and custom scripting. However, I know that better extensibility and APIs are things that will undoubtedly improve as new versions are released (there is increasing demand for this).

[TheVMinator]

OK thanks.  So is it possible then to use vCO to select a group of VMs in the Custom UI and assign them to a resource tag?

I know that vCO can do this kind of select operation in vCenter - is there a doc or something to get me started on how vCO can connect to the Custom UI and manipulate it?

[mark_j]

To-date, the only vCO-to-vCOps integration that I've seen accomplish this leverages vCOps field adapters. This is done via PSO engagement or occasionally if a larger customer has an in-house dev team that works with GSS. I haven't seen anything "how-to's" out there in the wild regarding this, but expect to see more public-facing docs in the future as the integration between these products become more common-place.

Your best bet is to workaround this situation for now. If you want to filter the VMs or members for your specific example, create a group in the custom UI using the dynamic or static criteria and then leverage this group within Custom UI to narrow down the VMs you need to drag over to your custom tag.

[TheVMinator]

OK thanks.  You said "create a group in the custom UI" - is it possible to create a group in the custom UI? Or did you mean in the admin UI?

[mark_j · Accepted solution]

Sorry, I meant Advanced UI. Make the group in the Advanced UI, then leverage it in the Custom UI for tag filtering.

[TheVMinator]

OK thanks again.