7.1
Table Of Contents
- Life Cycle Extensibility
- Contents
- Life Cycle Extensibility
- Machine Extensibility Overview
- Extending Machine Lifecycles By Using vRealize Orchestrator
- Configuring Workflow Subscriptions to Extend vRealize Automation
- Event Topics Provided with vRealize Automation
- Workflow Subscriptions and Event Broker Terminology
- Blockable and Replyable Event Topics
- Best Practices for Creating vRealize Orchestrator Workflows for Workflow Subscriptions
- Workflow Subscription Settings
- Working with Provisioning and Life Cycle Workflow Subscriptions
- Configuring vRealize Orchestrator Workflows for Provisioning and Life Cycle Workflows
- Workflow Subscription Life Cycle State Definitions
- Configuring the Timeout Values for States and Events
- Configuring the Error Behavior for States and Events
- Scenario: Take a Post-Provisioning Snapshot of a Virtual Machine
- Working with Approval Workflow Subscriptions
- Troubleshooting Workflow Subscriptions
- Troubleshooting vRealize Orchestrator Workflows That Do Not Start
- Troubleshooting Provisioning Requests That Take Too Much Time
- Troubleshooting a vRealize Orchestrator Workflow That Does Not Run for an Approval Request
- Troubleshooting a Rejected Approval Request That Should Be Approved
- Troubleshooting a Rejected Approval Request
- Extending Machine Life Cycles By Using vRealize Automation Designer
- Extending Machine Life Cycles By Using vRealize Automation Designer Checklist
- Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Designer
- Customizing IaaS Workflows By Using vRealize Automation Designer
- Workflows and Distributed Execution Management
- CloudUtil Command Reference
- vRealize Automation Workflow Activity Reference
Machine Extensibility Overview 2
Provisioning or decommissioning a new machine, especially for mission-critical systems, typically requires
interacting with a number of different management systems, including DNS servers, load balancers,
CMDBs, IP Address Management and other systems.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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Machine Life Cycle Extensibility
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Choosing a Life Cycle Extensibility Scenario
Machine Life Cycle Extensibility
You can inject custom logic at various predetermined IaaS life cycle stages by leveraging IaaS state
change workflows, known as workflow stubs. You can use the workflow stubs to call out to
vRealize Orchestrator for bi-directional integration with external management systems.
Note The workflow stubs are replaced by the event broker workflow subscriptions. They are still
available, supported, and they can be used, but expect them to be removed in a future version of
vRealize Automation. To ensure future product compatibility, you should use the workflow subscriptions to
run custom workflows based on state changes. See Chapter 4 Configuring Workflow Subscriptions to
Extend vRealize Automation.
Creating a state change workflow enables you to trigger the execution of a workflow before the IaaS
master workflow enters a specific state. For example, you can create custom workflows to integrate with
an external database and record information at different stages of the machine life cycle.
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Create a custom workflow that runs before the master workflow enters the MachineProvisioned state
to record such information as machine owner, approvers, and so on.
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Create a custom workflow that runs before a machine enters the MachineDisposing state to record
the time at which the machine was destroyed and data such as its resource utilization at last data
collection, last logon, and so on.
The master workflow illustrations show the main states of the master workflow, highlighting in yellow the
states you can customize by using IaaS workflow stubs. The Customizable State Change Workflows table
lists the workflow stubs available, their corresponding place in the master workflow state, and examples
of custom logic you could use at each state to extend the machine life cycle.
VMware, Inc.
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