Active Directory Integration in Cloud Assembly

In vRealize Automation, which is our on premise automation platform, you could specify where you wanted a virtual machine object placed in your Active Directory structure using integration Active Directory. This capability is now “out-of-the-box” functionality within Cloud Assembly. Let’s walk through how we set up this new integration.

How to Setup the New Active Directory Integration:

To be able to use an Active Directory environment in your datacenter from Cloud Assembly you will need to deploy an Extensibility Cloud Proxy into you environment. This is a small Photon based appliance which hosts the services which execute the Active Directory tasks. To get to the appliance download you just need to to go the Integration area of Cloud Assembly:

Once on the integrations screen you can select the ADD INTEGRATIONS button to see the full list of currently available integrations for Cloud Assembly. Select on the “Active Directory” tile to get to the configuration screen for on premise ABX:

If you don’t already have an Extensibility Cloud Proxy deployed in your environment, you can download the new Extensibility Cloud Proxy but clicking on the “NEW CLOUD PROXY” button and then selecting “DOWNLOAD OVA”:

From here you follow your normal process for installing an OVA in vSphere. During the OVA configuration you will be asked for the One Time Key (I removed my key from the screenshot 🙂 ) which is step three of the above screenshot. This OTK is what links this Extensibility Cloud Proxy to your subscription of Cloud Assembly. Once you have deployed the Extensibility Cloud Proxy and powered it on, approximately 10 minutes later, you will see the proxy listed in the Cloud Proxy’s list:

Now that the Extensibility Cloud Proxy is setup and ready to use, you can go back to the Integrations area in Cloud Assembly and select the “Active Directory” panel again to configure the necessary information for your Active Directory environment:

How To Use The Active Directory Integration:

Now that you have the Extensibility Cloud Proxy in place you can configure Cloud Assembly to stage the machine objects in Active Directory in the specific OU you specify in the configuration. To configure the OU for a project, select the integration you just created, select the Projects tab, then click on the ADD PROJECT button:

Now you can configure the OU for the selected project. The system will append the base DN you setup when creating the extensibility (in this example my base DN was DC=cmbu,DC=local) so do not add this as a part of the full DN path to the OU.

Now that everything is configured you can deploy a machine from one of the blueprints in Cloud Assembly and you will see that the machine object is pre-staged in the OU you specified.

Lastly, any machine that was originally staged using the Active Directory integration will be deleted from AD once the deployment is deleted from Cloud Assembly.

Summary:

Now with the “out-of-the-box” Active Directory integration in Cloud Assembly you can manage the placement of you machines within your AD structure easily through configurations at the project level. Look for many more integrations to come within Cloud Assembly!!!