Just another automation manager

To a lot of vRealize Automation 6-7 Managers moving to vRealize Automation 8 is a rather large adaptation of new skillsets. What we have currently been looking at is adapt the new Event Topic model. And there is a lot of Event Topics to follow, but I still feel something is missing. Full list of Event Topics documented @VMware Docs Compute allocation Yes Issued before the allocation of  resourcenames  and  hostselections . Both of these properties can be modified at this stage. Compute post provision Yes Issued after a resource was provisioned successfully. Compute post removal Yes issued after a compute resource was removed. Compute provision Yes Issued before the resource is provisioned at the hypervisor layer. Note: You can change the allocated IP address. Compute removal Yes Issued before the resource is removed. Compute reservation Yes Issued at the time of reservation. Note: You can change the placement order. Deployment action completed Yes Issued after a deploymen...

Many are using SSH to run commands something similar to  var  passwordAuthentication = false; var password = ''; var session = new SSHSession(hostName, username, port); session.connectWithPasswordOrIdentity(passwordAuthentication, password, path); Where the path leads to the private key file for the connection. Storing several key files in the vRO filesystem could easily lead to forget it when moving to a new vRO or add a new vRO node. Also when moving forward with vRO 8 it's less of a good idea to add elements to the local filesystem as a manual step. My suggestion for a solution is to make use of the vRO resource element. Store your key file as a vRO resource element, using the following step of code can runtime make the key available for SSHSession. var tempDirectory = System.getTempDirectory(); filePath =  tempDirectory + "/" + keyfile.name; keyfile.writeContentToFile( filePath ); Send the private key file as a resource to the action or workflow and you will h...

Recently looked for an in vRO cache system and came across https://github.com/dimitrovvlado/o11n-plugin-cache This is quite handy if you need a place to temporarily store values, eighter while provisioning, or to avoid using the vRO Lock system. Could be a perfect spot for storing info while all your workflows execute and need access to a token: CacheManager.mapService.putForMap("tokenStore", 'my-access-token', token, 15, CacheTimeUnit.MINUTES); var my-access-token = CacheManager.mapService.getForMap("tokenStore", my-access-token'); Other use cases could be to make sure a sequence number is not reused or an FQDN is kept unique until machines have properly provisioned.

vRA7 has a little habit of leaving tasks in a pending state this is how to deal with them. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/71246 Perhaps you aren't aware of a problem this is causing your users Try looking for all tasks that are running or specific states using these SQL queries      SELECT CurrentTask FROM dbo.VirtualMachine WHERE CurrentTask != NULL      SELECT CurrentTask FROM dbo.VirtualMachine WHERE CurrentTask = 'Reconfigure failed, waiting to retry'      SELECT CurrentTask FROM dbo.VirtualMachine WHERE CurrentTask = 'Reconfigure pending' Clear the tasks and let the users retry      UPDATE dbo.VirtualMachine SET CurrentTask = NULL WHERE CurrentTask = 'Reconfigure failed, waiting to retry'     UPDATE dbo.VirtualMachine SET CurrentTask = NULL WHERE CurrentTask = 'Reconfigure pending'