In my previous article, we described how to import existing AWS workloads in vRealize Automation (vRA). In this second part, we will see how to add 2nd Day action to these imported workloads.
2nd Day action is the term we use to describe what can be done in the “Management” phase of the workload lifecycle. Day 1 focus on the Request & Deployment phase while Day 2 action is stop, change instance type, terminate, etc..
So how do we achieve this in a quick and easy manner?
In a nutshell, we are going to leverage the existing vRealize Orchestrator workflows and make them available in the vRealize automation interface through the ASD feature. Super easy!
ASD stand for “Advanced Services designer” and give you the possible to manage your XaaS services in a nice and easy way. Here, our XaaS service is a Resource action to terminate AWS instances.
First, let’s go to ASD, Resource actions and click add
Expand the vRO workflow to find the proper workflow (Library/AWS/Elastic Cloud/instances). Click Next
Not much to do here. It’s all setup for you. Click Next:
This step is important. Set the name as you want it to appear. Give it an appropriate description in your context if needed (I use the default one). Since this action will actually remove the instance from the item list in vRA, we mark it as “Disposal”. Check “Hide Catalog request information page”. Click Next.
This step offer you the ability to build the form you want to provide to your end users. Here, our needs are very simple. We are just going to inform the user that it’s an important action and what effect it will have in the AWS context. Click Add and OK.
Click on publish.
Done! We have created our “terminate” resource action for AWS instances. Now, we need to give it a nice icon and entitle it to the correct users. Since these are basic catalog actions, I will not cover them here.
Once it’s done, you have the following result
Voila!
As you see, it’s fairly easy to add new resource actions such as stop, change instance type, etc..
So, the high level steps are:
- Create a resource action
- Leverage vRO workflow
- Design the service
- Publish & Entitle it
Keep in mind that we are focusing here on AWS instances but this method apply to any kind of object, you could import and manage AWS vPC, Security Groups, etc…
Also, while you can create your own workflows by leveraging AWS API, you can also use the existing ones. Here are some screenshots of the different workflows available:
Regards,
