Configuring VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator via CLI

VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator (formerly vRealize Orchestrator, and herein referred to as “Orchestrator”) is introducing a new feature in the latest release that enables administrators to configure the solution via a command line interface (CLI). This post will look at what can be achieved with this new functionality.

Those familiar with Orchestrator will know it comes virtually ready to use straight out-of-the-box, aside from configuring plugin connections. However, certain settings can be adjusted to tailor it to the environment and use cases that you have. For example, logging configuration and system properties. Until now, the only supported method to make these changes was via an interface called the “Control Center”.

With the July 2023 / 8.13.0 release, VMware has introduced the ability for many of these settings to be controlled via the Orchestrator appliance’s command line. The goal of doing this is to make scripted/automated deployments of Orchestrator easier to perform and offer more of a DevOps approach to configuring the solution. The CLI will be present regardless of whether you are using Orchestrator in tandem with VMware Aria Automation, or as a standalone deployment alongside VMware vSphere.

Accessing the CLI

The new CLI is an extension of the existing vracli tool, which has been present for some time now in both the VMware Aria Automation and Orchestrator appliances.

The vracli tool can be used directly in the appliance’s console or via an SSH connection. As you might have noticed already, the first positional argument for the command includes the option to reference “vro” – a reference to Orchestrator’s former name.

CLI capabilities

Now that you know how to access the CLI, let’s take a look at what it can do.

Authentication

This option is intended for external Orchestrator instances, i.e., not embedded with VMware Aria Automation appliances, as embedded instances automatically have the authentication provider setup. With external instances, however, an authentication provider should be configured. That could be either to VMware Aria Automation or to vSphere.

To get the current authentication provider configuration, use the following:

vracli vro authentication

To configure an authentication provider using a guided wizard, the command is:

vracli vro authentication wizard

To configure an authentication provider using parameters, start with:

vracli vro authentication set

Then the following parameters can be used to customise the authentication provider:
-p, –provider: Authentication provider type. Either vsphere or vra. (Required)
-hn, –hostname: The hostname of the authentication provider we want to configure. (Required)
-u, –username: An administrator username of the authentication provider. (Required)
-k, –ignore-certificate: Specifying this parameter trusts the authentication provider certificate automatically. (Optional)

For the sake of brevity I have not included all of the parameters above. However, the following two examples demonstrate how this command could be used:

echo "my-pass" > /data/vco/usr/lib/vco/password_file
vracli vro authentication set -p vra -hn https://my-aria-automation.local -u [email protected] --password-file /usr/lib/vco/password_file 

vracli vro authentication set -p vsphere -hn https://my-vsphere.local -u [email protected] --tenant vsphere.local --admin-group Administrators --admin-group-domain vsphere.local

Licensing

This option allows for Orchestrator’s license information to be queried or configured. There are two choices for licensing Orchestrator: it can either be provided with a license key directly or use the configured authentication provider for its license. By default, when Orchestrator is embedded with Aria Automation, the authentication provider is used for the license.

To get the current license configuration, use the following command:

vracli vro license

To set a new license key for Orchestrator, substitute the key into the following command:

vracli vro license set <LICENSE-KEY>

Finally, to reset the license to the one provided by the authentication provider, the command is:

vracli vro license default

Log Configuration

Logging configuration here refers more to the level of logging that takes place, rather than the destination and management of log entries. To manage where log entries are sent, a different option is required (vracli vrli) and it is documented here.

To retrieve the current log configuration, use this command:

vracli vro logs

To configure the log level settings for Orchestrator, use the following command:

vracli vro logs configure

Combined with the following parameters:
-l, –level: Server logging level. (Optional)
-sc, –scripting-count: The number of Scripting Log rotations saved. (Optional)
-sl, –scripting-level: Scripting Log Level. (Optional)
-ss, –scripting-size: Scripting Log Size in MB. (Optional)
Note: Valid levels: ALL, TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, OFF

System Properties

The final option covered here is the configuration of system properties. These properties are key-value pairs and govern specific functions and behaviours within Orchestrator. vExpert Mayank Goyal has documented several of these properties in a post on his blog if you’d like to investigate them, or you can visit the product documentation for more information.

To retrieve all configured system properties (as JSON):

vracli vro properties

To set a System Property, use the following command with the parameters below:

vracli vro properties set -k key -v value

Parameters:
-k, –key: The name of the property to add. (Required)
-v, –value: The string value of the property to add. (Required)
-n, –noRestart: Whether modifying this property requires restart of the Orchestrator service. By default a restart is required. (Optional)

The following example demonstrates how to set the value of a fictitious property:

vracli vro properties set -k com.vmware.o11n.property -v true

Finally, and instead of consulting the product documentation (you really should read the documentation though), to get the name, value and description of the most commonly used Orchestrator properties you can use the following:

vracli vro properties advanced

Further reading

Full details about the CLI options and functionality may be found in VMware’s documentation for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator. These are just some examples of what can be accomplished.

Orchestrator remains one of my favourite VMware solutions to this day. Which is just as well, as I have worked with it a lot over the past 10 years! As a means to develop or extend automation capabilities, Orchestrator is still a big-hitter.