7.2

XaaS Blueprint Terminology
XaaS blueprints are vRealize Orchestrator workflows that can provision resources, make changes to
provisioned resources, or behave as a service that performs a task in your environment. The blueprints
and the resource actions have several nuances that you must understand when you design blueprints for
your service catalog users.
The following definitions help you understand the terms used when working with XaaS blueprints.
Custom resource A vRealize Orchestrator object type that is exposed as a resource through
the API of a vRealize Orchestrator plug-in. You create a custom resource to
define the output parameter of an XaaS provisioning blueprint and to define
an input parameter of a resource action.
XaaS blueprint
component
A provisioning or non-provisioning blueprint that you can use in the
blueprint design canvas. This blueprint might also be a standalone XaaS
blueprint.
Standalone XaaS
blueprint
A provisioning or non-provisioning blueprint that is published and entitled
directly to the service catalog.
Provisioning blueprint A provisioning blueprint that runs a vRealize Orchestrator workflow to
provision resources on the target endpoint using the vRealize Orchestrator
plug-in API for the endpoint. For example, add virtual NICs to a network
device in vSphere. To create a provisioning blueprint, you must have a
custom resource that defines the vRealize Orchestrator resource type.
When a service catalog user requests this type of catalog items, the
workflow provisions the item and the deployed item is stored on the Items
tab. You can define post-provisioning operations for this type of provisioned
resources. You can also make the blueprints scalable by adding or
removing instance when needed.
Non-provisioning
blueprint
A non-provisioning blueprint runs a vRealize Orchestrator workflow to
perform a task that does not require the API to make changes to an
endpoint. For example, the workflow that runs builds a report and then
emails it or posts it to a target communication system.
When a service catalog user requests this type of catalog item, the
workflow runs to perform the scripted task, but the item is not added on the
Items tab. You cannot perform post-provisioning operations on this type of
blueprint. You can use non-provisioning blueprints as supporting workflows
in scalable blueprints. For example, you can create a blueprint to update a
high availability load balancer.
Composite blueprint A blueprint that was created using the design canvas. The composite
blueprint uses one or more components. For example, a machine
component, a software component, or an XaaS component. When you add
it to a service, it is listed as a Deployment. When you add it to an
Configuring vRealize Automation
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