Service Manual

Provisioning and Extensibility Overview of Dell VIS Self-Service Creator
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Manage Workflow
Once the workload provisioning process has completed, the workload moves into the manage phase.
During this phase, the workload is up, running, and ready for end user use. To provide more
functionality to the workload owner, VIS Self-Service Creator allows event-driven execution of
workload tasks through the end-user portal.
Figure 6: Manage Workflow Extensibility Overview
Workload
Owner
VMM
Power On/Off/Cycle
Reboot Guest OS
Suspend
Custom
Action
Customer Specific
Script
VIS Self-Service Creator
Customer
Specific
Process
Customer
Specific
Portal
Workload
Owner
RESTful API Call
Request Execution
VM
VM
VM
Workload management features built into VIS Self-Service Creator include the ability for end-users to
reboot the guest OS, power-cycle, power-on, and power-off workloads. Access to these actions can be
controlled by the administrator on a blueprint-by-blueprint basis. Each request is sent to the
appropriate hypervisor which executes the requested action.
Also available is the option to re-provision the workload. With re-provisioning, the running workload is
shutdown, deleted, and rebuilt using the provisioning workflow. Since it is an existing workload,
hostname and static IPs remain constant, new approvals are not required, and the lease time is not
extended. This is an excellent fit for test and development environments where users need the ability
to rebuild workloads quickly and without administrator interaction.
Custom Integration
For organizations that require additional functionality, VIS Self-Service Creator contains an extensible
event-driven framework to execute customer business logic (workflows or existing scripts). By
modifying an XML-based configuration file, administrators are able to dynamically extend the end-user
portal by adding the customer’s tasks to the workload context menu. Tasks available for user
execution are controlled on a blueprint-by-blueprint basis.
For example, if a user needs to kick off a VM level snapshot, the administrator can create a script
utilizing VMware PowerCLI to connect to vCenter and execute the snapshot creation. If the user needs
to roll back the snapshot, another script can be executed to roll back the snapshot. These scripts
execute within the VIS Self-Service Creator framework and have access to read, modify, and create
custom properties associated with the workload.
Virtually any task that can be scripted can be executed through VIS Self-Service Creator. Typically,
these tasks are specific to the organization’s needs, such as the synchronization of content to a
webserver or restarting of processes.