Update August 2021 – Including VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation 8.5 enhancements.
A very waited functionality, the VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation has finally become available, with this new plug-in, you can create and execute vRealize Orchestrator workflows towards your vRealize Automation instance, furthermore you could use the Out-of-the-Box workflows that are provided with the Plug-in to start interacting with vRealize Automation resources.
The VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation Plug-in 8.5 supports now scripting objects generation such as cloud accounts, cloud zones, projects, tags, and CRUD operations to build your own content. For each object, some sample content is provided by default
You also can use either the embedded vRealize Orchestrator instance in your vRealize Automation installation, or an external vRealize Orchestrator server.
The VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation Plug-in 8.5 will be preinstalled on the embedded vRealize Orchestrator bundled with your vRealize Automation 8.5 environment, regardless, you will be able to easily install it in any vRealize Orchestrator version from 8.3+, Embedded or Stand-Alone, as well as with the vRealize Orchestrator shipped within the Cloud Extensibility Proxy.
However I encourage you to read the release notes, as you may face some technical limitations based on the vRealize Orchestrator version and the plug-in version combination, e.g., you may find that import of Create vSphere Cloud Account and Updating vSphere Cloud Account workflows import is not supported in Service Broke when you have vRealize Orchestrator 8.4.1 & VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation Plug-in 8.5, so recommendation here is to upgrade to vRealize Automation 8.5 to get the most of vRealize Automation and the plug-in.
Installing the VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation Plug-in 8.5 plug-in follows the same standard procedure for adding any plug-in via the vRealize Orchestrator Control Center.
You can Download the VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation Plug-in 8.5 from the Market Place (the one marked as 8.4.2+ is the right one).
Once installed you can access the associated workflows and leverage the vRealize Automation Plug-in API with vRealize Orchestrator Client.
From this point you could manage vRealize Automation hosts by running the default workflows that come with the vRealize Automation plug-in and that are available under Library > Workflows then filtering with the vRealize_Automation_8.x_and_Cloud_Services tag in the workflow search box.
Now, if you look closely to the workflows presented above, you will notice that in this first delivery, the vRealize Automation plug-in provides the necessary workflows to manage your vRealize Automation hosts, e.g. Add vRA Cloud Host Workflow will allow me to add my vRealize Automation Cloud Org by selecting my vRAC Host URL (based on your local region) and providing the following input and my API Token:
Something very similar is accomplished with Add vRA Host with the main difference being that you need to provide your vRealize Automation URL and a service account credentials, if Shared Session mode is selected (By default whenever the plug-in is installed in an embedded vRealize Orchestrator/vRealize Automation, the vRealize Automation 8.X Endpoint is added automatically, you can then use the “vRA Update Host” workflow for any changes).
Please note For vRealize Automation 8.X Endpoint, we have support for per User Session as well as Shared Session. For vRealize Automation Cloud , we currently provide support for Shared Session.
After successfully executing these workflows you could find your vRealize Automation endpoints in the vRealize Orchestrator‘s inventory:
This new plug-in also provides support for generic REST operations on dynamically created hosts (such as the ones above), which makes it simple to invoke any vRealize Automation 8.3 API (Programming Guide).
The supported REST operations are:
| Workflow | Description |
|---|---|
| Get operation | Generic rest client support for HTTP GET operation. |
| Put operation | Generic rest client support for HTTP PUT operation. |
| Post operation | Generic rest client support for HTTP POST operation. |
| Patch operation | Generic rest client support for HTTP PATCH operation. |
| Delete operation | Generic rest client support for HTTP DELETE operation. |
Using the previously added vRealize Automation Cloud Endpoint I will exploit the vRealize Orchestrator plug-in Post Workflow and deploy an existing Cloud Template:
Please note that I don’t need to provide the Authorization Header, in the REST call, this is because the authentication will be handled by the plug-in itself, since we have already ingested the endpoint in Realize Orchestrator‘s inventory, and whenever a new brand new request is initiated towards that vRealize Automation end point (as in this example), an Access Token will be fetched from the target endpoint. For any subsequent request, Access Token will be fetched from vRO caching support.
when finally process our deployment request, we could see the vRealize Automation Cloud response to it at the logs.
and the actual deployment complete
I could also query one of my vRealize Automation 8.3+ Endpoints to discover current deployments with a REST Get operation:
which returns a couple of deployments discovered:
that we can confirm inspecting the vRealize Automation UI:
Of course, these are basic examples but this point you could build more complex workflows and logic out of these basic ones.
It is also important to highlight that the vRealize Orchestrator Client provides an API Explorer to allow you to search the vRealize Automation 8.5 API and see the documentation for JavaScript objects that you can use in scripted elements.
In fact, be advised that the use cases in the latest Extensibility Migration Guide guide, reference resources included in the Extensibility Migration Package Samples package hosted on VMware {code}, that you can download and install in your vRealize Orchestrator.
Subsequents phases of the vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation will introduce more functionality, stay tuned for more.
Conclusion:
The vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vRealize Automation deepens the integration between vRealize Orchestrator and vRealize Automation, enabling Cloud admins to easily automate tasks in both vRealize Automation and vRealize Automation Cloud. By leveraging out-of-the-box workflows or creating custom workflows, Cloud and DevOps admins can simply execute tasks in vRealize Automation on a larger scale and in a faster manner. Moreover, the plug-in can help connect vRealize Automation to a rich third-party ecosystem, integrating vRealize Automation with external systems.
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