Setting up XaaS with vRealize Automation Cloud

Author: Dustin Ellis, VMware Solution Architect; Advanced Customer Engagement

Project Team:

Amanda Blevins, Mandy Botsko-Wilson, Carlos Boyd, Darryl Cauldwell, Paul Chang, Kim Delgado, Jason Karnes, Phoebe Kim, Andy Knight, Riaz Mohamed, Chris Mutchler, Nikolay Nikolov, Michael Patton, Raghu Pemmaraju

Introduction:

VMware vRealize Automation Cloud (vRA Cloud) can take both your on-prem provisioning resources and your cloud resources and combine them into a single provisioning and management interface. But what about those operations that don’t necessarily involve machine provisioning such as virtual IP creation and management? In vRealize Automation, we used a concept called eXtensibility as a Service with vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) or XaaS, but can we use that in vRA Cloud? Of course!

Process Overview:

1. Integrate vRO with vRA Cloud via Service Broker.
2. Import vRO workflows.
3. Modify the workflows as needed.
4. Ensure that the workflows are visible as catalog items and ready to be used

Pre-Requisites:

1. Download and deploy the SaaS On-Prem vRealize Orchestrator instance https://vro-appliance-distrib.s3.amazonaws.com/VMware-vRO-Appliance-SAAS.ova
2. Ensure that workflow desired has been developed and is available in the vRO instance used.
3. Ensure that an existing cloud proxy exists in the on-prem location that vRO was deployed.
4. Ensure that a Project has been configured.
5. Log-in to Service Broker and create a new Integration.
   1. Infrastructure > Connections > Integrations. Select vRealize Orchestrator
      
6. Complete the details requested. Ensure the connection is validated before adding.

XaaS:

After ensuring that all pre-requisites above are met you can now start setting up the content that you want visible to your consumers. First, let’s setup content sources:

1. Select the Content & Policies tab within Service Broker.
2. Select Content Sources.
3. Select New.
   
4. Create the content source:
   1. Choose the Type of vRealize Orchestrator Workflow (Beta).
   2. Name the source, such as XaaS.
   3. Select Add for workflows
      1. Select all workflows desired. You can also search using the filter and pressing Enter.
         
   4. Once all desired workflows are added, click Create & Import to complete the addition of the content source.
      
   5. Once data collection is completed, the import the content should successfully show as imported.
      
5. Modify blueprint forms as necessary
   1. Select Content.
   2. Select the workflow imported and click the vertical ellipsis
      
   3. Choose Customize Form
   4. Activate the Custom Form if necessary, even using custom values from vRO Actions!
      
   5. Once all form customizations are complete, click Save
6. Validate that the workflow is now visible from the Catalog Items page.
   

That’s it! Creating XaaS catalog items to perform complex tasks is simple and easy using VMware vRealize Automation Cloud.

Known Limitations:

As this is a new feature (currently in “Beta”) there are some known limitation in how XaaS can be used. As the product is being constantly enriched with new and updated features we expect these gaps to close:

Array inputs are currently not supported.

Binding workflow inputs to other screen inputs is not currently supported.

More Resources

If you want to learn more you can visit our website where we maintain a complete list of our features.

Detailed documentation for vRA Cloud can be found here.

Finally, vRA Cloud is available as a service and you can try it for free with no commitments for 30 days.