Service Manual

Provisioning and Extensibility Overview of Dell VIS Self-Service Creator
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Workload Lifecycle
Virtually everything has a lifecycle associated with it. In the IT world, the lifecycle of a workload
typically starts with the requestor’s original requirements and ends with the final decommissioning of
the workload. At its core, VIS Self-Service Creator manages the complete lifecycle of workloads in your
environment. The workload lifecycle can be defined into six steps:
VIS Self-Service Creator provides users a self-service portal to select and deploy resources
automatically and manage the resource throughout its lifecycle. The out-of–the-box workflows help to
automate workload deployment and management for virtual servers and desktops. Each of these
workflow steps can also be extensively customized to meet the needs the organization.
Next, we will describe extensibility and integration options available within VIS Self-Service Creator.
Extensibility and Integration Options
VIS Self-Service Creator offers a variety of methods to customize the user’s experience, leverage
existing provisioning systems and integrate with existing business processes. While many of these
features are available through the user interface or custom scripting, the most advanced extensibility
features may require support from Dell Services to achieve full benefit. In this section, we provide an
introduction to the extensibility and integration options.
Scripting Framework
VIS Self-Service Creator provides administrators a robust scripting framework that enables the setting
and retrieval of custom properties for use throughout the provisioning process. Custom properties are
name-value pairs that can be set by administrators at multiple levels within VIS Self-Service Creator
including reservation, build profile, and blueprints. These custom properties are tracked on a
workload by workload basis. Optionally, custom properties may also be displayed to workload
requesters and approvers for additional input.
At multiple event-driven stages in the workload lifecycle, administrators can execute scripts utilizing
this robust framework. The executed scripts are granted access to all properties associated with the
specific workload. In addition to reading custom properties, the executing scripts can create or modify
the custom properties associated with the request for consumption by later scripts. For organizations
with well-defined IT lifecycle processes, administrators can often execute their existing provisioning
script with little or no modification.
Table 1 contains a small subset of sample custom properties provided by VIS Self-Service Creator. For
a complete list, refer to the VIS Self-Service Creator User Guide.
Request Approval Provision Manage Archive Destroy