7.1

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Understanding Nested Blueprint Behavior on page 350
You can reuse blueprints by nesting them in another blueprint as a component. You nest blueprints for
reuse and modularity control in machine provisioning, but there are specic rules and considerations
when you work with nested blueprints.
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Selecting a Machine Component that Supports Software Components on page 352
You deliver Software components by placing them on top of supported machine components when
you assemble blueprints.
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Creating Property Bindings Between Blueprint Components on page 352
In several deployment scenarios, a component needs the property value of another component to
customize itself. You can bind properties of XaaS, machines, Software, and custom properties to other
properties in a blueprint.
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Creating Explicit Dependencies and Controlling the Order of Provisioning on page 353
If you need information from one of your blueprint components to complete the provisioning of
another component, you can draw an explicit dependency on the design canvas to stagger
provisioning so the dependent component is not provisioned prematurely. Explicit dependencies
control the build order of a deployment and always trigger dependent updates during a scale in or
scale out operation.
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Scenario: Assemble and Test a Blueprint to Deliver MySQL on Rainpole Linked Clone Machines on
page 354
Using your application architect, software architect, or IaaS architect privileges, create a blueprint to
combine your MySQL component with the vSphere CentOS linked clone blueprint you created.
Understanding Nested Blueprint Behavior
You can reuse blueprints by nesting them in another blueprint as a component. You nest blueprints for reuse
and modularity control in machine provisioning, but there are specic rules and considerations when you
work with nested blueprints.
A blueprint that contains one or more nested blueprints is called an outer blueprint. When you add a
blueprint component to the design canvas while creating or editing another blueprint, the blueprint
component is called a nested blueprint and the container blueprint to which it is added is called the outer
blueprint.
Using nested blueprints presents considerations that are not always obvious. It is important to understand
the rules and considerations to make the best use of your machine provisioning capabilities.
General Rules and Considerations for Nesting Blueprints
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As a best practice to minimize blueprint complexity, limit blueprints to three levels deep, with the top-
level blueprint serving as one of the three levels.
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If a user is entitled to the top-most blueprint, that user is entitled to all aspects of the blueprint,
including nested blueprints.
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You can apply an approval policy to a blueprint. When approved, the blueprint catalog item and all its
components, including nested blueprints, are provisioned. You can also apply dierent approval
policies to dierent components. All the approval policies must be approved before the requested
blueprint is provisioned.
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When you edit a published blueprint, you are not changing deployments that are already provisioned
by using that blueprint. At the time of provisioning, the resulting deployment reads current values
from the blueprint, including from its nested blueprints. The only changes you can pass on to
provisioned deployments are edits to software components, for example edits to update or uninstall
scripts.
Configuring vRealize Automation
350 VMware, Inc.