Active System Manager Integration for VMware vRealize Orchestrator User’s Guide
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Contents 1 Overview......................................................................................................................... 5 2 About The Document...................................................................................................... 6 3 Executive Summary........................................................................................................ 7 4 What’s new in the ASM vRO Plugin 2.0..........................................................................
11 Integrating with vRealize Automation...........................................................................25 Prerequisite for vRA Integration.......................................................................................................................................25 Non-Interactive Workflow as vRA XaaS Blueprints.......................................................................................................... 25 Interactive Workflow as vRA XaaS Blueprints.........................
1 Overview The Dell Active System Manager integration for vRealize Orchestrator (vRO), formerly known as vCenter Orchestrator (vCO), enables key automation functions, which can be embedded into vRealize Orchestrator workflow. The workflow helps in provisioning infrastructure, capacity scaling, remediation actions, and service teardown. These features help IT teams to broaden their business solutions, improve responsiveness, and simplify complex IT processes.
2 About The Document This documentation provides information regarding: • Installing ASM vRO integration • Validating the installation • Upgrading ASM vRO • Configuring ASM vRO API • Workflow and Action • Using vRealize Orchestrator • Integrating with vRealize Automation • Troubleshooting • Uninstalling ASM vRO Integration 6
3 Executive Summary ASM is a service-based management console that automates end-to-end template-based provisioning and lifecycle management of infrastructure and workloads in today’s modern data center. ASM and its REST base API, enables end-to-end integration and automation with additional tools and management consoles in the data center. Active System Manager integration of VMware vRealize Orchestrator, automates customers, cloud and integrate VMware management systems with Active System Manager.
4 What’s new in the ASM vRO Plugin 2.0 In the previous releases, 1.0 ~ 1.1, the update was required for the support of ASM release 8.1.1 from release 8.1.0. This version has been implemented to support the ASM release 8.2.1 and new vRO version. Noticeably, the API objects are replaced and updated. The model objects provide more detail about the mirroring ASM objects than previous versions. The API Explorer has updated method signature and descriptions for commonly used objects and methods.
5 Installing the ASM vRO Plugin for Integration Before installing ASM vRO integration, ensure that you have met the installation prerequisites: Installation Prerequisites To install ASM vRO Integration, vRO environment must meet the following criteria before installing the Integration: • The ASM vRO plugin 2.0 requires vRO 7.0. • The vRO server must be able to communicate to the ASM appliance servers through HTTPS protocol (ports 443 and 8281). • The vRO server must be in a clean state.
6 Validating the Installation To validate the installation, make sure: • The package contents are imported. • ASM API/SDK is available. • New Inventory object is created. Validating Package Content 1. When the ASM vRO Integration is successfully installed, new contents should appear in vRO. To inspect these, launch the vRO client, and select the Design view. 2. You see six tabs in the left panel to inspect different types of vRO contents.
* Scaledown Service (Async) * Scaledown Service — App (Async) * Scaledown Service — Cluster (Async) * Scaledown Service — Server (Async) * Scaledown Service — Storage (Async) * Scaledown Service — VM (Async) * Scaleup Service — Server (Async) * Scaleup Service — Storage (Async) * Teardown Service — All (Async) * Teardown Service — Selective (Async) – Noninteractive * Deploy Service * Scaleup Service — Server – Synchronous * Deploy Service * Scaledown Service * Scaleup Service — Server * Scaleup Service — St
7 Upgrading ASM vRO The following are the pre-requisites for upgrading ASM vRO: • The ASM must be updated to release 8.2.1. • The ASM requires vRO 7.0 instead of 5.5 or 6.0. NOTE: When you uninstall the older version of the plugin, the workflows created using that version is also deleted. Hence, ensure that you recreate the workflows and update the vRA service blueprints with the new workflows after installing the newer version of the plugin.
8 API for ASM vRO Integration The ASM vRO Integration includes a package with useful elements such as the actions, workflows, and inventory. The ASM vRO Integration is operated through the ASM plugin API. The API includes the SDK module, types, objects, and their methods. The types are used for representing the API objects into the inventory or finder view. The API objects contain attributes and methods that are useful for automating procedures which require ASM operations.
API Objects There are eight API objects that are included in the ASM SDK module. This section covers each object and the associated attributes and methods. NOTE: Not all API objects have attributes and/or methods. ASMAppliance This object establishes HTTPS connection to the ASM REST webservice to make the requests. This is the most crucial object for the Integration.
• getService: Retrieves the Service of the given name. – name — Name of the Service that should be retrieved. • getServiceById: Retrieves the Service of the given id. – deploymentId — id of the Service that is to be fetched. • getServiceStatus: Returns the status of the target Service (For example, in_progress, complete, error). NOTE: The returned status is no longer capitalized as in versions 1.0 –1.1. – vsoDeployment — Service that is to be checked for its status.
– vm — Boolean value indicating that VIRTUALMACHINE type components are to be removed. – app — Boolean value indicating that SERVICE (application) type components are to be removed. • scaleDownServiceComponent: Removes the target ServiceComponent object from the Service and returns its resources to the resource pool. Returned object is the Service with updated components list. – deployment — The Service to be down scaled. – component — The ServiceComponent object to be removed from the Service.
– appliance – The ASMAppliance object to be removed. ASM Service The Service object describes the ASM Service with minimum essential information. Attributes: • deployedBy – Shows the ASM user that deployed the Service. • deploymentDate — Shows when the Service was deployed. • description — Shows the description of the Service if available. • id — Identifier used by the vRO to relate and find objects. • name — Name of the Service.
• type (String) — The ServiceComponent type — value can be SERVER, STORAGE, CLUSTER, VIRTUALMACHINE, or SERVICE (which is the application on servers or vm’s) Methods • ASMServiceComponent — Constructor method that takes another ASMServiceComponent object and clones another object from it. – component — The source ASMServiceComponent object. • ASMServiceComponent — Constructor method that takes the configuration data and creates a ASMServiceComponent object.
9 Workflow and Actions The Dell ASM vRO Integration is prepackaged with a set of sample workflows and actions. These can be used as out of the box to immediately enable common use cases. They may also be used to serve as examples that can be extended by advanced users. Underlying actions and API’s are updated, but the workflows provide the same user experience as with versions 1.0 and 1.1.
Following are the set of scaledown operation workflow: • Scaledown Service: Scale down the Service by removing the selected ServiceComponent (prompted during the workflow run). • Scaledown Service – App: Scale down the target service by removing all resources of app type. • Scaledown Service – Cluster: Scale down the target service by removing all resources of cluster type. • Scaledown Service – VM: Scale down the target service by removing all resources of VM type.
There are two sample synchronous scaleup service workflows: • Scaleup service – Server: Scale up the service by adding more server components or resources. This workflow tracks the status of the target Service, and it completes its run when the Service status is no longer in in_progress. • Scaleup service – Storage: Scale up the service by adding more storage components or resources.
This calls the getTemplates method from the ASMAppliance. An array of Template objects is returned. scaleDownService This action calls the scaleDownService method of the ASMAppliance. A Service object with updated information is returned. scaleDownServiceComponent This action calls the scaleDownServiceComponent method from the ASMAppliance. A Service object with updated information is returned. serviceExists This calls serviceExist method to check if the Service exists in the ASM appliance.
10 Using vRealize Orchestrator By using vRO with ASM integration, you can perform the following actions: • Add a new ASM Appliance object to the vRO inventory • Deploy a new service to vRA • Add a server to an existing service • Teardown a service with selected resource types Adding a New ASM Appliance Object to vRO Inventory For using ASM vRO plugin, the best way is to utilize the vRO workflows which are packaged with the plugin.
The workflow uses the ASM API to call the target ASM server. The workflow enters the waiting phase until the service is fully deployed. The workflow is completed after the Service deployment is completed (For example: The status of the service is no longer in_progress). NOTE: Once the cloud infrastructure is deployed, VMware vRealize Automation (vRA) can be used to grant users selfservice access to deploy virtual machines in the environment.
11 Integrating with vRealize Automation The Dell Active System Manager integration with vRealize Orchestrator and its workflows are embedded to publish vRealize Automation Service Blueprints. The result allows you to call ASM using the vRealize Orchestrator workflow which is used through the vRA self-service catalog items. Prerequisite for vRA Integration Make sure that you have met the following prerequisites for vRA Integration: 1. There are two distinctive modes of operations in vRA.
12. Click Add to complete creating the XaaS Blueprint. A new XaaS Blueprint should appear on the right pane with its given name, description, and the status. 13. Select this item, and click Publish. The XaaS Blueprint is now visible as a catalog item. NOTE: It still has to be added to an entitled Service else, the catalog item has to be added to an entitlement individually. 14. Select the Administration tab and click Catalog Management, then click Catalog Items from the left pane.
14. Click Submit. The vRA triggers the vRO workflow to call the ASM server for a new service deployment. Workflow Output The ASM vRO sample workflow may have an output parameter with a custom API object type. If the vRA needs to use the information in the output parameter, it cannot be parsed easily in the vRA layer.
12 Troubleshooting You can troubleshoot ASM vRO Integration issue using: • vRO Exceptions • vRO Application Server Log • ASM Log vRO Exceptions When an API method is invoked through actions or scripts, the operation is requested by the ASM server. However, the ASM server may return an error message due to internal server issues or bad user inputs. In such cases, the message is mapped to an exception to be thrown.
Go to http://www.dell.com/asmdocs for additional supporting documents on ASM. For more information about ASM including how to videos, white papers, blogs, and support forum, see Dell Active System Manager page on Dell TechCenter: http://www.dell.
13 Uninstalling ASM vRO Integration Before uninstalling the ASM vRO integration, make sure that the integration is already installed. The Validate the Installation section describes the procedure of validating ASM vRO integration. If the integration is not installed, the inventory tab does not show the root FinderResult object. It has Dell logo with the name “ASM”. Also, you can check the API Explorer to see whether the ASM SDK module exists or not.
14 Known Issues and Forewarning • In order to use the deployTemplate method in the ASMAppliance object, the target template in ASM should have all the required fields set to a static value or to auto-generate the value upon deployment request. In ASM UI, the deployment is not allowed unless the required fields are all set. However, the vRO API plugin does not check to see if all the fields are set.
15 Compatibility Matrix The matrix below describes the compatibility between different plugin versions, ASM releases, and vRO versions: Table 1. Compatibility Matrix ASM vRO Plugin Version ASM Release vRO Version 1.0 8.1.0 through 8.1.1 5.5 and 6.0 1.1 8.1.0 through 8.2.0 5.5 and 6.0 2.0 8.2.1 and newer releases 7.0 NOTE: Earlier versions, 1.0 ~ 1.1, are deprecated. For ongoing support, upgrade the ASM server and vRO to the latest version.
