If you recall, the VMware Aria Automation 8.18 API endpoints can be found at the following url: https://vrafqdn/automation-ui/api-docs . Mine looks like this. These are the endpoints you use to programatically interact with Aria Automation 8.18. First, you'll get a Token via POST /csp/gateway/am/api/login , like this. Once you have your Token you can authenticate via Authorize top right of whatever section you're looking to run calls in. Here I'm in Blueprints section, pr

I wanted to send email notifications to the VCF Automation team on VM Deployments, it wasn't quite as easy as expected, here's how I did it! First, I added all the Properties I wanted to include in the email to my VCFA Blueprints. Here's a code snippet, but if you'd like the full Blueprint you can get it here . Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1: type: Cloud.vSphere.Machine properties: image: ${input.os} cpuCount: ${input.vcpuCount} totalMemoryMB: ${input.tota

We recently discussed several post-provision Orchestrator Workflows in VCF Automation: Adding Notes to your VM in VCF Automation Post-Deployment Actions with VCF Automation Adding Tags to your VMs in VCF Automation Blueprints Adding Notes and Tags to your VMs at build time with your VCFA Blueprints can be quite useful, but I'd also like to add Custom Attributes which are presented in a very consumable fashion in VCF Operations. This is what I want to use them for, let's se

In one of my labs I only have a vCenter, VCF Operations, and Fleet Manager, but still wanted to deploy VCF Automation, here's what I did. First I configured my Fleet Manager Depot, in this case I'm using an Online Depot. I then downloaded the VCFA 9 Install Binaries. Next I added the VCF Automation Component. I went with a Small New Install of VCFA 9.0.0.0. I won't go through the entire workflow here, but this is where you'll do the following: Create your Certificate Select t

In our last blog we discussed a Post-Deployment Action in VCF Automation that creates a Snapshot of the VM once it's deployed, which we implemented via a VCFA Subscription and Orchestrator Workflow. In this blog we will use a similar methodology to add Notes to VMs built with VCFA. Let's go! Too often I see VMs in vCenter that look like this. Powered off, no Notes, no idea who owns it, etc. I'd like all VMs to at least have some text in the Notes tile. We can force this a

In our last several blogs we've discussed VCF Automation related topics. Adding Tags to your VMs in VCF Automation Blueprints VCF Automation Custom Forms Integrating VCF Orchestrator with GitHub VCF Automation Image Mappings Set Administrator Password and Enable RDP on Windows VMs VCF Automation Blueprint Options VCF Automation Quickstart Today we'll cover post-deployment actions with VCF Automation by calling Orchestrator Workflows via Subscriptions. Specifically, I'd like

I've created various Blueprints in my VCF Automation environment, addressing different customer demands. I'd like users deploying VMs via the Generic VM Blueprint to add vSphere Tags to their deployments, this is what I did. All screenshots in this blog are taken from VCFA 8.18.1. I'll be including code snippets below, but if you'd like to have the full Bluepring, you can download it here . First, I ask the user for several inputs: VM Name, vCPU, Memory, OS, IP, etc. inputs:

I've been building VCF Automation Blueprints lately, they present like this in the Service Broker - Consume - Catalog. All screenshots here are from VCF Automation 8.18.1. Selecting the Generic VM tile gives us this. While this is fine, I wanted a bit more: additional text, more descriptive information bubble text, radio button options, and more. How to do this? Custom Forms ! I think of Custom Forms as smart skins on Blueprints, a way to make things look a bit different.

In VCF Operations 9 we introduced a feature called Log Assist which allows you to upload Support Bundles to Broadcom Support from VCF Operations itself. Here's how it works. First, you must Register and License your VCF Operations instance, documentation on how to do that can be found here . Second, you must have a Unified Cloud Proxy deployed in your environment. I covered how to deploy these previously here . Be sure to confirm Log Assist is Activated on your Unified Clo

We've discussed Security and Compliance before a few times: Compliance with Aria Operations Aria Operations Custom Benchmarks Manage VMware vSphere Configuration and Compliance with vRealize Operations This blog will focus on the DISA Security Standards Regulatory Benchmark, screenshots here are taken from Operations 8.18.5. Out of the box, none of the Regulatory Benchmarks are activated. To activate them you select ACTIVATE FROM REPOSITORY which will install the Management

Can I integrate VCF Orchestrator with GitHub? Yes, here's how ! In this blog, I will be using my VCF Automation 8.18.1 embedded Orchestrator. Log into VCF Automation and select the Orchestrator tile. Once there go to Administration - Git Repositories and select ADD REPOSITORY. Define the GitHub Repository URL, provide your Username and a Token. To generate the GitHub Repository Token log into GitHub, select your Profile top right and click Settings. Then select Developer S

We have VCF Automation deployed (in this case 8.18.1) and would like to start giving the user OS options upon request. How can we do this? Image Mappings! Log into VCF Automation, go to Service Broker - Infrastructure - Configure - Image Mappings. Click NEW. Give your Image a name, select an Account/Region to pull from, then select the Image to map from the dropdown of Images. This will be the list of Templates as shown in vCenter. I've created 4 Image mappings, one for ea

I'd like to sum Metrics over time in VCF Operations, but Super Metrics don't support time series calculations, so what to do? View Transformations with Intervals, here's how! The use case here is to sum ESXi Host Energy consumption over time, specifically by day. The metric itself looks like this. You'll notice the metric is Total Energy Consumed in the collection period (Wh), by default the collection period is 5m. I created a View against the Host System Object Type usin

VCF Operations 8.18 HF9 recently dropped , which can be applied to any 8.18.x environments. You can apply it directly via the Operations Admin UI or via the Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager. Let's download the PAK file and apply it directly via the Admin UI. Log into the Broadcom support portal and download this PAK File. You can also download the APUAT PAK file and apply it which will run the Upgrade Assessment Test. Let's run it. Log into the Operations Admin, go to Softwar

We've discussed both vCenter and ESXi Host Certificate visibility available in VCF Operations before, but what if you'd like to re-create the list of Certificates provided here. Note: all screenshots here are taken from VCF Operations 8.18.5. Clicking on VIEW CERTIFICATES shows the details. We can export these via the EXPORT to CSV button, but what if we want to see them in a Dashboard. We already have a way to do that for the vCenter TLS/STS/Root Certificates , but what

We're deploying Windows VMs with VCF Automation, but would like to set the Administrator password and enable RDP as part of the deployment process, how can we do this? VM Customization Specifications, let's go! In vCenter (I'm running 8.0.3 in this lab) go to Policies and Profiles - VM Customization Specifications. I've named mine Windows Customization Specification with a Target Guest OS of Windows. I set the Administrator password here. And turned on RDP here along with al

In our last blog we used the VCF Automation Quickstart to guide us through creation of our first Template/Blueprint. I'd like to take that Template/Blueprint and expand on it, first by allowing the user to input a few things. Let's go. If you recall, our original Template/Blueprint looked like this. When published to the Service Broker Catalog it looks like this. I'd like to make this a bit more robust: Allow the user to select Cpu Count up to a maximum and provide a defau

I recently deployed VCF Automation 8.18.1 to test something and I noticed the Quickstart page upon login. I usually just skip this step, but for some reason it caught my eye this time, let's go through it. Click LAUNCH QUICKSTART, which will ask you to configure your Cloud Account: either vCenter or VCF. In my case, I'll just create a vCenter Cloud Account by clicking START on that tile. Provide a vCenter, Username, and Password. Click VALIDATE to confirm connectivity, wh

We introduced the vCommunity Management Pack here . We discussed the second batch of use cases it addresses here . In Part 3 of this series, we will introduce more Content: Dashboards, Views, and Alerts. You can get the latest version of the vCommunity Management Pack here . The first Dashboard we built was for ESXi Hosts, highlighting Advanced System Settings and Packages being captured by the vCommunity Adapter Instance/s. It looks like this. Across the top you have bar

I borked the admin@local password on my VCF Operations Fleet Manager, so had to reset it. Found this KB which got me going. root@vcfops-bpeterson [ /opt/vmware/share/vami ]# ./vami-vlcm-passwd-reset Enter new password: Confirm Password: retrying--- count for get password: 1. Sleeping for 10 seconds retrying--- count for get password: 2. Sleeping for 10 seconds retrying--- count for get password: 3. Sleeping for 10 seconds As you can see, that didn't work. Since I don't ha

In our last blog we introduced the vCommunity Management Pack for VCF Operations. We went into detail around installation, configuration, and the first four use cases ESXi Advanced System Settings, ESXi Software Packages, VM Advanced Parameters, and VM Options. Today we will discuss the next two use cases: Windows Services and Events. If you recall, the vCommunity Management Pack comes with several configuration files, as shown here. The windows_service_list.xml configura

Broadcom Technical Account Manager Onur Yuzseven has been leading the development effort of a Management Pack for VCF Operations called the VCF Operations vCommunity Management Pack . You can find his blog here . The goal here is to augment what comes out of the box with Operations, providing additional Metrics, Properties, Dashboards, and more. It was developed with the Operations Integrations SDK as opposed to the Management Pack Builder . You can get the vCommunity Ma

The VCF Operations API surface exposes metrics, for reference here are a few blogs related to this: Pulling Super Metric Values from the VCF Operations API Pull Cluster Capacity Remaining % via Aria Operations API Pull vSphere World Metrics from the VCF Operations API Today we'll discuss how to capture Datastore metrics, let's go. First, let's authenticate. I'm going to authenticate with local credentials, but there are other ways to do this as well. Once authenticated you