6.2

Specifying the characteristics of the machines to be provisioned is generally done by adding properties to
blueprints and build profiles. You can make custom properties available to multiple blueprints and all
business groups by placing them in build profiles.
Any property specified in a blueprint overrides the same property specified in the incorporated build
profile. This enables a blueprint to use most of the properties in a profile while differing from the profile in
some limited way. For more information, see Order of Precedence for Custom Properties..
For example, a blueprint that incorporates a standard developer workstation profile might override the US
English settings in the profile with UK English settings. On the other hand, if no appropriate profile is
available all the needed properties can be specified in the blueprint itself. This arrangement ensures that
the number and complexity of blueprints remain manageable.
At new machine request time, vRealize Automation has not yet allocated a reservation and the compute
resource and endpoint are unknown as well. Therefore, only custom properties from a build profile,
blueprint and business group are reconciled and presented when the machine is requested.
Order of Precedence for Custom Properties
When the same property exists in more than one source, a specific order is followed when applying
properties to the machine.
You can add custom properties that apply to provisioned machines to the following elements:
n
A reservation, to apply the custom properties to all machines provisioned from that reservation
n
A business group, to apply the custom properties to all machines provisioned by business group
members
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A global or local blueprint, to apply the custom properties to all machines provisioned from the
blueprint
n
Build profiles, which can be incorporated into any global or local blueprint, to apply the custom
properties to all machines provisioned from the blueprint
n
A machine request, if you are a business group manager, to apply the custom properties to the
machine being provisioned
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The applicable approval policy, if any exist and if advanced approval support is enabled, to require
approvers to provide the values to be applied to the machine being approved
The full order of precedence for custom properties is that any property value specified in a source later in
the list overrides values for the same property specified in sources earlier in the list. The order is shown in
the following list:
1 Build profile
2 Blueprint
3 Business group
4 Compute resource
5 Reservations
IaaS Configuration for Physical Machines
VMware, Inc. 9