As you probably know in vRealize Automation you can create your own Resources (Custom Resources) and Day-2 actions (Resource Actions) backed by vRealize Orchestrator workflows in your Cloud Templates and deployments!
You could learn the basics at this excellent blog Custom Resources and Resource Actions in vRealize Automation Cloud by Vincent Riccio and I would suggest also review this blog Integrating Tanzu Mission Control with vRealize Automation Custom Resources by Sam McGeown where these capabilities are put into action for a real use case.
However today I will like to talk about the recently introduced Custom Resources & Resource Actions capabilities in vRealize Automation 8.5 & vRealize Automation Cloud.
- Simplifying troubleshooting by automatically linking vRealize Automation‘s Deployments to the vRealize Orchestrator Workflows event ID execution.
- vRealize Automation Deployment’s “Request details” tab includes the the workflow Inputs & Outputs.
- Ability to create Extensibility Subscriptions based on new XaaS Custom Resource PRE- and POST- Event Topics.
These features will streamline the troubleshooting whenever there is an issue and make it simpler to trigger extensibility actions, while at the same time, easily accessing these custom resource specific data, for further processing, either way, by ABX or vRealize Orchestrator.
Let’s take a closer look to these features,
Custom Resource Action troubleshooting, whenever you run a Custom Resource Action or provision a Custom Resource , you will have the ability to easily track the workflow execution for custom resource actions. There is a new link in the request history of the resource which leads to more details about the workflow run.
Previously if the vRealize Orchestrator workflow for day 2 actions and Custom Resource provisioning failed, there was no way to easily track the workflow execution and find the reason for a failure, but now there is.
Please note that the link is also available for a successful deployment, however the link is not available when we open the deployment in Service Broker, as the end user may not have access to Cloud Assembly.
“Request details” tab includes the the workflow Inputs & Outputs, this capability will enable you to find at the “Request details” tab the Custom Resource or 2-Day Action request history and discover two tables, the first one displays the workflow inputs, second one displays the workflow outputs (if any).
In the previous releases, this information was missing and made any issue, hard to troubleshoot as you couldn’t confirm which data was used, unless you searched & inspected the vRealize Orchestrator Workflow execution.
Extensibility Subscriptions based on new XaaS Custom Resource PRE- and POST- Event Topics, this new feature provides the possibility of creating PRE and POST provision subscriptions for XaaS Custom Resources.
Where a PRE provision event, notifies the subscription will be sent before the vRealize Orchestrator workflow execution is started and a POST event will be sent right after the vRealize Orchestrator workflow (that provisions the custom resource) execution is completed.
Custom Resource Pre and Post provision subscriptions work for XaaS Custom Resources provisioned via both Cloud template and vRealize Orchestrator workflow.
You can access the following data, and even use it as filter criteria for the extensibility subscription.
You can learn more in this brief video demo
Conclusion:
Resources (Custom Resources) and Day-2 actions (Resource Actions) are a very powerful capability that allows you to wrap complex process into single Resource Constructs that can be consumed easily in Cloud Templates They enable you at Day -0 but also presenting Day-2 Actions associated to Standard or Custom Resources and by introducing these new capabilities described in this blog will streamline the troubleshooting whenever there is an issue and make it simpler to trigger extensibility actions then easily access these resource specific data, for further processing either way, ABX or vRealize Orchestrator
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