6.2
Table Of Contents
- Foundations and Concepts
- Contents
- Foundations and Concepts
- Introducing vRealize Automation
- Tenancy and User Roles
- Service Catalog
- Infrastructure as a Service
- Advanced Service Designer
- Common Components
- Extensibility
- vRealize Automation Extensibility Options
- Leveraging Existing and Future Infrastructure
- Configuring Business-Relevant Services
- Integrating with Third-Party Management Systems
- Adding New IT Services and Creating New Actions
- Calling vRealize Automation Services from External Applications
- Distributed Execution
Custom Resources
You must create a custom resource so that you can create an advanced service for provisioning with the
option to access and manage the provisioned items. Custom resources define the items for provisioning,
and you can use them to define post-provisioning operations that the consumers can perform.
You create a custom resource to define a new type of provisioned item and map it to an existing
vRealize Orchestrator object type. vRealize Orchestrator object types are the objects exposed through
the APIs of the vRealize Orchestrator plug-ins. The custom resource is the output type of a blueprint
workflow for provisioning and can be the input type for a resource action workflow.
For example, if you have a running vCenter Server instance, and you also have the vCenter Server plug-
in that is configured to work with vRealize Orchestrator, all of the object types from the vCenter Server
API are exposed in vRealize Orchestrator. The vCenter Server plug-in exposes the vSphere inventory
objects in the vRealize Orchestrator inventory. The vSphere inventory objects include data centers,
folders, ESXi hosts, virtual machines and appliances, resource pools, and so on. You can perform
operations on these objects. For example, you can create, clone, or destroy virtual machines.
For more information about the vRealize Orchestrator object types exposed through the vCenter Server
API, see the vCenter Server 5.5 Plug-In API Reference for vCenter Orchestrator.
Resource Mappings
You create resource mappings between the vRealize Automation catalog resource type and the
vRealize Orchestrator inventory type to manage resources provisioned outside of Advanced Service
Designer.
For example, you might want to create an action so that users can take a snapshot of their Amazon
machines. For this action to work on an Amazon machine provisioned by using IaaS, the three
components involved, Advanced Service Designer, vRealize Orchestrator, and IaaS, need a common
language for the Amazon machine. You create that common language by adding a resource mapping in
Advanced Service Designer that runs a vRealize Orchestrator scripting action or workflow to map the
IaaS Cloud Machine resource type to the vRealize Orchestrator AWS:EC2Instance inventory type.
vRealize Automation provides resource mappings, and the underlying vRealize Orchestrator script
actions and workflows, for vSphere virtual machines, vCloud Director virtual machines, and
vCloud Director vApps.
Service Blueprints
A blueprint is a complete specification of a service.
With service blueprints, you can publish predefined and custom vRealize Orchestrator workflows as
catalog items for either requesting or provisioning. Blueprints for requesting run workflows with no
provisioning and provide no options for managing a provisioned item. Before you create a blueprint for
provisioning, you must map the workflow output parameter as a custom resource. Then you can assign
resource actions that define post-provisioning operations.
Foundations and Concepts
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