Active System Manager Integration for VMware vRealize Orchestrator User’s Guide
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Contents 1 Overview................................................................................................................. 5 2 About The Document...........................................................................................6 3 Executive Summary.............................................................................................. 7 4 Installing ASM vRO Integration..........................................................................8 Installation Prerequisites..............
Deploy a New Service to vRO.............................................................................................................23 Add a Server to an Existing Service.................................................................................................... 24 Teardown the Service......................................................................................................................... 24 10 Integrating with vRealize Automation.................................................
Overview 1 The Dell Active System Manager integration for vRealize Orchestrator (vRO), formerly known as vCenter Orchestrator (vCO), enables key automation functions, which can be embedded into vRealize Orchestrator workflow. The workflow helps in provisioning infrastructure, capacity scaling, remediation actions, and service teardown. These features help IT teams to broaden their business solutions, improve responsiveness, and simplify complex IT processes.
About The Document This documentation provides information regarding: • Installing ASM vRO integration • Validating the installation • Upgrading ASM vRO • Configuring ASM vRO API • Workflow and Action • Using vRealize Orchestrator • Integrating with vRealize Automation • Troubleshooting • Uninstalling ASM vRO Integration 6 2
Executive Summary 3 ASM is a service-based management console that automates end-to-end template-based provisioning and lifecycle management of infrastructure and workloads in today’s modern data center. ASM and its REST base API, enables end-to-end integration and automation with additional tools and management consoles in the data center. Active System Manager integration of VMware vRealize Orchestrator, automates customers, cloud and integrate VMware management systems with Active System Manager.
Installing ASM vRO Integration 4 Before installing ASM vRO integration, ensure that you have met the installation prerequisites: Installation Prerequisites To install ASM vRO Integration, vRO environment must meet the following criteria before installing the Integration: • The vRO server must be able to communicate to the ASM appliance servers through HTTPS protocol (port 443). • The vRO server must be in a clean state.
7. After restarting vRO server, it returns to the main menu page, click vRealize Orchestrator Client. 8. Enter your administrator credential to log in. 9. After you log in, you can see ASM plugin on home page.
Validating the Installation 5 To validate the installation, make sure: • The package contents are imported. • ASM API is available. • New Inventory object is created. Validating Package Content 1. When the ASM vRO Integration is successfully installed, new contents should appear in vRO. To inspect these, launch the vRO client, and select the Design view. 2. You see six tabs in the left panel to inspect different types of vRO contents. First select the Packages tab.
Upgrading ASM vRO 6 ASM vRO plugin version 1.0.0 is not supported on ASM 8.2. To use vRO version 5.5 and 6.0 on ASM release 8.2, you must upgrade the plugin to version 1.1.0. To upgrade the plugin to version 1.1.0: 1. Remove the older version of the plugin installed on your system. For more information, see Uninstalling ASM vRO Integration. 2. Follow the instructions in Installing ASM vRO Integration to install the 1.1.0 plugin.
API for ASM vRO Integration 7 The ASM vRO Integration includes a package with useful elements such as the actions, workflows, and inventory. The ASM vRO Integration is operated through the ASM plugin API. The API includes the SDK module, types, objects, and their methods. The types are used for representing the API objects into the inventory or finder view. The API objects contain attributes and methods that are useful for automating procedures which require ASM operations.
• This type is mapped to ServiceFolder. The type and class both provide nothing much other than the inventory structure and hierarchy. The object of this type has the ASM:Appliance type object as its parent while having child objects of the ASM:Service type objects. See ServiceFolder for detail. ASM — Template: • Scripting object: Template • This type is mapped to Template. In finder view, the object of this type is structured under the ASM:TemplateFolder type object.
storages will be used by the servers that the original storage support). Target volume must be able to allocate resources for the chosen configuration. – deployment – Target Service where new server component(s) are added. – targetStorage – ServiceComponent of STORAGE type that provides the configuration for the duplicate storage(s). – newStorageName – Name of the new storage(s); if more than one instance of storages are requested, sequence number is appended to the name.
• getServices: Returns a list of all the Services in the ASM server. • getTemplates: Returns a list of all the published Templates in the ASM server. • scaleDownService: This method removes the resources of the selected types from the chosen Service. If a resource type is selected and no resources of that type exists, it will simply the operation of the scale down. – deployment – The Service where the resources of the selected types are to be removed.
Attributes: • domain (String): The domain of the credential provided (that is, username and password). • id (String): identifier issued by the vRO Integration, which is used to track the ASM Appliance for internal operations. • name (String): User-given name of the ASM appliance. • serverUrl (String): URL of the ASM Appliance. • sslTrustAllCerts (boolean): Indicate if SSL trust is enabled. • username (String): User name for the authentication.
ServiceComponent The ServiceComponent object contains minimum essential data of the resources or components in Services. Resources that are described can be servers, storages, cluster, virtual machines, and applications. Attributes: • id (String): The ServiceComponent identifier given by the ASM server. • ip (String): The IP address of the resource. • name (String): Name of the ServiceComponent. • resourceName (String): Name of the hardware resource. • serviceTag (String): Shows the service tag.
Workflow and Actions 8 The Dell ASM vRO Integration is prepackaged with a set of sample workflows and actions. These can be used as out of the box to immediately enable common use cases. They may also be used to serve as examples that can be extended by advanced users. Workflow The prepackaged ASM vRO Integration workflow is divided into two types: • Configuration workflow — These can be used to store and remove ASM appliance configurations within vRO.
This workflow allows users to deploy a new Service based on the template configuration chosen by the user. This workflow is completed after making the REST call to the ASM Appliance. The Service status is not tracked. Scaledown service Following are the set of scaledown operation workflow: • Scaledown Service: Scale down the Service by removing the selected ServiceComponent (prompted during the workflow run). • Scaledown Service – App: Scale down the target service by removing all resources of app type.
This workflow allows users to deploy a new service based on the template configuration chosen by the user. This workflow tracks the status of the new Service, and it completes its run when the service status is no longer displaying as IN_PROGRESS. Scaledown service This workflow scales down the service by removing the selected Service Component (prompted during the workflow run).
The addDuplicateServer(s) method cannot scale up the server(s) unless the target server for duplication is configured in this way: • The server must be created with hardware settings that specify the server source to be server pool instead of manual entry. • The duplicated servers must be provisioned from the same server pool from where the original server was pulled out. addDuplicateStorage The method, addDuplicateStorage, is called from the ASMAppliance API object.
The actions in this group are used for creating inventory items for the ASM appliance resources and other general helps: addAsmApplianceConfig This is an action that persists the given configuration of the ASMAppliance object by calling the create method of the ASMHostConfigManager. removeAsmApplianceConfig This removes the vRO resource used for persisting the ASMAppliance configuration (which is added through addAsmApplianceConfig action or ASMHostConfigManager.create method).
Using vRealize Orchestrator 9 By using vRO with ASM integration, you can perform the following actions: • Add a new ASM Appliance object to the vRO inventory • Deploy a new service to vRA • Add a server to an existing service • Teardown a service with selected resource types Adding a New ASM Appliance Object to vRO Inventory For using ASM vRO plugin, the best way is to utilize the vRO workflows which are packaged with the plugin.
The default ASMAppliance object should already be set as the input parameter 2. Click Submit to proceed. 3. Click the selection box. A message stating Not set is displayed. Select the template to deploy in the window that is displayed. 4. Click Submit. 5. Provide the service name and modify the description of the service. 6. Click Submit. The workflow uses the ASM API to call the target ASM server. The workflow enters the waiting phase until the service is fully deployed.
Integrating with vRealize Automation 10 The Dell Active System Manager integration with vRealize Orchestrator and its workflows are embedded to publish vRealize Automation Service Blueprints. The result allows you to call ASM using the vRealize Orchestrator workflow which is used through the vRA self-service catalog items. Prerequisite for vRA Integration Make sure that you have met the following prerequisites for vRA Integration: 1. There are two distinctive modes of operations in vRA.
7. Click the Add button on the right pane to add a new service blueprint. 8. First select the Deploy Service workflow that was modified earlier in vRO. 9. Click the Next button. 10. Edit the details as needed, then proceed. NOTE: A blueprint form is not required for a non-interactive workflow. 11. Click Next, and make sure that no resource is provisioned after running the workflow. 12. Click Add button to complete creating the service blueprint.
6. Select the Schema tab, and remove all the design elements except for the action element, DeployService. 7. Edit the DeployService element. Bind the local parameters and source parameters accordingly. 8. Save the workflow and close the editor mode. NOTE: This workflow is ready to be encapsulated into a vRA Service Blueprint. 9. Go back to the vRA tenant console, create a service blueprint by choosing the modified workflow. Proceed until the new Service Blueprint is added.
Troubleshooting 11 You can troubleshoot ASM vRO Integration issue using: • vRO Exceptions • vRO Application Server Log • ASM Log vRO Exceptions When an API method is invoked through actions or scripts, the operation is requested by the ASM server. However, the ASM server may return an error message due to internal server issues or bad user inputs. In such cases, the message is mapped to an exception to be thrown.
ASM Log If there is no obvious issue in the vRO, the last resort is to check the ASM appliance log itself. See the ASM documentations for further troubleshooting. Go to http://www.dell.com/asmdocs for additional supporting documents on ASM. For more information about ASM including how to videos, white papers, blogs, and support forum, see Dell Active System Manager page on Dell TechCenter: http://www.dell.
Uninstalling ASM vRO Integration 12 Before uninstalling the ASM vRO integration, make sure that the integration is already installed. The Validate the Installation section describes the procedure of validating ASM vRO integration. If the integration is not installed, the inventory tab does not show the root FinderResult object. Also, you can check the API Explorer to see whether the ASM SDK module exists or not. The following steps describe how to uninstall the ASM vRO Integration: 1.
