VMware

Running in-guest scripts on VMs from vRealize Automation

Once I sorted out how to use vRA to deploy VMs with specified virtual hardware configurations, the next big step was to perform actions inside the guest OS to further customize the deployment. I experimented with a few different approaches of varying complexity, but have (for the most part) settled on using vRA's Action-Based eXtensibility (ABX) component. This lets me write PowerShell code to connect to a vCenter through PowerCLI and leverages the VMware Tools connection to gain access inside the guest. From there, I can pass in whatever commands I want.

I wrote a post to document how I'm using ABX to expand a server's C: volume to fill the underlying virtual disk, add specified domain accounts as administrators on the system, configure the firewall, and more: 

https://virtuallypotato.com/run-scripts-in-guest-os-with-vra-abx-actions

I scaled-out a single-node vRealize Automation 8.x environment to a 3-node vRA High Availability cluster behind a standalone NSX Advanced Load Balancer (AKA Avi Vantage Controller). My previous experience with the NSX-ALB was in NSX-centered lab exercises, so it took me a bit of fumbling to get things going in this configuration.

I put down some quick-and-dirty notes (sorry no pictures this time) to help remember for the future:
https://virtuallypotato.com/notes-on-vra-ha-with-nsx-alb

Continuing my efforts to document and share the things I've learned and solutions I've hacked together while working on a VMware vRealize Automation project, I wrote up the details of how I got vRA to register static DNS records in Microsoft DNS by using a Windows SSH host as an intermediary. That let me use the DNS PowerShell cmdlets included in RSAT without complicated nested authentication problems.  
https://virtuallypotato.com/creating-static-records-in-microsoft-dns-from-vrealize-automation

In this post, I explore two enhancements to the vRealize Orchestrator workflow cobbled together for generating unique hostnames which comply with a defined naming standard:

1. Leveraging vRO's built-in Active Directory plugin to connect to AD and run a search to make sure a computer object with the proposed hostname doesn't already exist.
2. Importing the DnsClient-PS PowerShell module to vRO and using that to query DNS to make sure that hostname doesn't have a record already.

https://virtuallypotato.com/vra8-custom-provisioning-part-three

At this point in my ongoing vRA8 project, I tackle the challenge of deploying systems with automatically-generated organizationally-unique hostnames which meet the organization's defined naming standards. Along the way, I got to brush on JavaScript quite a bit. 

https://virtuallypotato.com/vra8-custom-provisioning-part-two

In this post, I go over my first vRA server deployment process, and leverage tags to control where the resulting VM gets provisioned. This lays the groundwork for more complicated deployments in the future.

https://virtuallypotato.com/vra8-custom-provisioning-part-one