Hol 2073 02 CMP - PDF - en PDF

HOL-2073-02-CMP
Table of Contents
Lab Overview HOL-2073-02-CMP - What's New in vRealize Automation 8 ........................ 3
Lab Guidance .......................................................................................................... 4
Module 1 - Foundation - Getting Started with vRealize Automation (15 minutes)............. 9
Introduction........................................................................................................... 10
Update The Lab Files Repository If Not Already Done ........................................... 13
Configure Public Cloud Accounts If Not Already Done ........................................... 17
Understanding Cloud Accounts and Cloud Zones.................................................. 20
Understanding Projects In Cloud Assembly ........................................................... 30
Understanding Mappings for Cloud Abstraction .................................................... 33
Understanding Network Profiles ............................................................................ 37
Conclusion............................................................................................................. 40
Module 2 - Building Blueprints with Cloud Assembly (45 minutes) ................................. 41
Introduction........................................................................................................... 42
Introduction to Cloud-Agnostic Infrastructure-as-Code ......................................... 47
Configure Public Cloud Accounts If Not Already Done ........................................... 50
Creating Your First Application Blueprint ............................................................... 53
Creating A Cloud Agnostic Blueprint ..................................................................... 78
Managing your resource infrastructure with tags.................................................. 94
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 120
Module 3 - Integration with GitHub, NSX-T On-Demand Networking and Infoblox (45
minutes)........................................................................................................................ 121
Introduction......................................................................................................... 122
Overview GitHub Integration and Configuration in Cloud Assembly ................... 123
Synchronize GitHub Sourced blueprint to Cloud Assembly ................................. 128
Overview of vRealize Automation 8 and NSX-T On-Demand-Network
Integration .......................................................................................................... 144
Review and Deploy in Cloud Assembly with NSX-T On-Demand Networking ...... 149
Validate and Test CentOS Deployments with NSX-T On-Demand Networking ..... 163
Infoblox Overview ............................................................................................... 178
Configure IPAM Infoblox Plugin............................................................................ 179
Review Infoblox Prerequisites and Configure Cloud Assembly Network Profile ... 183
Deploy Infoblox CentOS VM ................................................................................ 197
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 212
Module 4 - vRealize Automation Extensibility Basics (45 minutes) ............................... 213
Introduction to Extensibility ................................................................................ 214
Creating an Action-based Extensibility (ABX) Action ........................................... 217
Creating a Compute Provisioning Subscription ................................................... 225
Creating a Compute Provisioning Post Subscription ............................................ 238
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 263
Module 5 - Managing Content in Service Broker (45 minutes) ...................................... 264
Introduction to Service Broker............................................................................. 265
Accessing Service Broker .................................................................................... 267
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Configure Public Cloud Accounts If Not Already Done ......................................... 270

Adding Content to Service Broker ....................................................................... 273
Working with Custom Forms................................................................................ 313
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 330
Module 6 - Integrating Development Tools into Code Stream Pipelines (30 minutes) ... 331
Introduction......................................................................................................... 332
Accessing Code Stream....................................................................................... 334
Creating a Code Stream Pipeline......................................................................... 342
Executing a Code Stream Pipeline ...................................................................... 353
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 364
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Lab Overview
HOL-2073-02-CMP -
What's New in vRealize
Automation 8
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Lab Guidance
A note about vRealize Automation consumption and licensing models: With the
release of vRealize Automation version 8, the same code base is used for both the on-
premise installed version, vRealize Automation, and the software as a service (SaaS)
delivered version, vRealize Automation Cloud. VMware gives you the choice now of
having the same workload automation and management solution experience regardless
of whether you decide to deploy it as a virtual appliance and run it in your data center
or whether you prefer to consume it as a service hosted in the could and managed by
VMware.
While this lab happens to use the vRealize Automation version 8.0 , what you see and
learn here will be equally applicable to vRealize Automation Cloud.
If you are looking for Hands On Labs for vRealize Automation version 7.6 or more in-
depth information on vRealize Orchestrator, please see the Hands On Lab catalog for
labs with SKUs beginning with "HOL-1921".
It may take more than 90 minutes to complete this lab. You should expect to only finish
2-3 of the modules during your time.
In this lab, you will use VMware vRealize Automation 8.0 to define, govern, budget,
build, manage, monitor and share the release of your application infrastructure rapidly
and reliably. You will learn how to create application patterns in Cloud Assembly, curate
application blueprints and make them available in Service Broker. You will also learn to
integrate development tools into a continuous delivery pipeline with Code Stream.
Lab Module List:
• Module 1 - Foundation - Getting Started with vRealize Automation (10 minutes)

• Module 2 - Building Blueprints with Cloud Assembly (45 minutes)
• Module 3 - Integration with GitHub and NSX-T On-Demand Networking (40
minutes)
• Module 4 - vRealize Automation Extensibility Basics (45 minutes)
• Module 5 - Managing Content in Service Broker (45 minutes)
• Module 6 - Integrating Development Tools into Codestream pipeline (30 minutes)
The Table of Contents can be accessed in the upper right-hand corner of the Lab
Manual. From the Table of Contents you can jump to any point in the lab manual.
If you are new to VMware Hands On Labs, it is recommended that you continue through
this Lab Guidance section to learn about some of the lab manual features and some tips
on how to copy text from the manual into the console. However, if you want, you can
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jump to the student check-in process (module 1) and proceed from there to any of the
other lab modules.
Lab Captains:
• Narmadha Moorthy, Application Developer-IT, India

• Trisha Navarro, Consulting Architect, United States
• Michael Patton, Staff Advanced Customer Engagement Architect, United
States
• Frances Wong, Cloud Partner Solution Architect, United States
• Julienne Pham, Consulting Architect, Ireland
• Sam Aaron, Senior Consultant, United States
• Ed Bontempo, Solution Engineer, United States
This lab manual can be downloaded from the Hands-on Labs Document site found here:
http://docs.hol.vmware.com
This lab may be available in other languages. To set your language preference and have
a localized manual deployed with your lab, you may utilize this document to help guide
you through the process:
http://docs.hol.vmware.com/announcements/nee-default-language.pdf
Location of the Main Console
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1. The area in the RED box contains the Main Console. The Lab Manual is on the tab
to the Right of the Main Console.
2. A particular lab may have additional consoles found on separate tabs in the upper
left. You will be directed to open another specific console if needed.
3. Your lab starts with 90 minutes on the timer. The lab can not be saved. All your
work must be done during the lab session. But you can click the EXTEND to
increase your time. If you are at a VMware event, you can extend your lab time
twice, for up to 30 minutes. Each click gives you an additional 15 minutes.
Outside of VMware events, you can extend your lab time up to 9 hours and 30
minutes. Each click gives you an additional hour.
Alternate Methods of Keyboard Data Entry
During this module, you will input text into the Main Console. Besides directly typing it
in, there are two very helpful methods of entering data which make it easier to enter
complex data.
Click and Drag Lab Manual Content Into Console Active

Window
You can also click and drag text and Command Line Interface (CLI) commands directly
from the Lab Manual into the active window in the Main Console.
Accessing the Online International Keyboard
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You can also use the Online International Keyboard found in the Main Console.
1. Click on the Keyboard Icon found on the Windows Quick Launch Task Bar.
Click once in active console window
In this example, you will use the Online Keyboard to enter the "@" sign used in email
addresses. The "@" sign is Shift-2 on US keyboard layouts.
1. Click once in the active console window.

2. Click on the Shift key.
Click on the @ key
1. Click on the "@ key".
Notice the @ sign entered in the active console window.
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Activation Prompt or Watermark
When you first start your lab, you may notice a watermark on the desktop indicating
that Windows is not activated.
One of the major benefits of virtualization is that virtual machines can be moved and
run on any platform. The Hands-on Labs utilizes this benefit and we are able to run the
labs out of multiple data centers However, these data centers may not have identical
processors, which triggers a Microsoft activation check through the Internet.
Rest assured, VMware and the Hands-on Labs are in full compliance with Microsoft
licensing requirements. The lab that you are using is a self-contained pod and does not
have full access to the Internet, which is required for Windows to verify the activation.
Without full access to the Internet, this automated process fails and you see this
watermark.
This cosmetic issue has no effect on your lab.
Look at the lower right portion of the screen
Please check to see that your lab is finished all the startup routines and is ready for you
to start. If you see anything other than "Ready", please wait a few minutes. If after 5
minutes your lab has not changed to "Ready", please ask for assistance.
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Module 1 - Foundation -
Getting Started with
vRealize Automation (15
minutes)
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Introduction
VMware vRealize Automation 8.0 is the latest release of vRealize Automation is built on
a modern container-based microservices architecture. The shift to containers means
management, configuration, and future upgrades have been dramatically simplified.
Also the new architecture offers significantly improved scalability and performance, with
flexible deployment options. Previous versions of vRealize Automation required at least
two virtual machines (VMs), including the need to run portions of the architecture on a
Windows server. vRealize Automation 8 removes the need to run Windows. Additionally
all vRealize Automation services now run within a single VM with sufficient scale and
performance for many customer. If additional horsepower is needed and high availability
is a requirement, vRealize Automation 8 supports a three node cluster configuration
which adds scale and high availability. Scale can also be improved through increasing
VM compute resources.
You will need about 10 minutes to complete this module.
Lab Captains :
• Narmadha Moorthy, Application Developer -IT,India
vRealize Automation 8.0 Modern Architecture
vRealize Automation 8 has been designed from the ground up to simplify and speed up
building, managing and using a hybrid cloud environment.
Highlights of What's new in vRealize Automation 8.0 :
• Modern architecture : The modern, container-based architecture is easier to

manage, scale and troubleshoot.
• Cloud-agnostic blueprints : Customers can design blueprints regardless of their
endpoint destination, so the same blueprint can be deployed on different
endpoints depending on business needs and predefined policies.
• Multi-cloud management : Customers can deploy workloads on public clouds as
endpoints. In addition, customers can use native public cloud services as
constructs within blueprints.
• Fine-grained governance : Enhanced governance capabilities that are based on
projects and teams.
• VMware Code Stream : Advanced continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/
CD) release pipeline management provides visibility into active pipelines and
analytics.
• Kubernetes support : Kubernetes cluster management supports PKS as well as
native Kubernetes clusters.
• Resource reservation : Based on projects and cloud zones.
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vRealize Automation 8.0 Components
1. VMware Cloud Assembly : Automation and configuration of cloud services.

Orchestrates infrastructure and application delivery across hybrid and multi-
cloud environments.
2. VMware Service Broker : A unified catalog across a multi-cloud environment
that allows end users to request infrastructure and application services in a
policy-based self-service manner. Aggregates content from multiple resources
and platforms, including VMware Cloud Assembly, vRealize Orchestrator and
native public clouds, into a common product catalog. Provides flexible, policy-
based guardrails for governance.
3. VMware Code Stream : Automates the application and infrastructure delivery
process with release pipeline management, including visibility and analytics into
active pipelines and their status for troubleshooting. Allows DevOps teams to
leverage existing tools and processes with out-of-the-box integrations.
4. VMware vRealize Orchestrator : A workflow engine that allows users to
create and manage workflows.
5. VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager : Automated deployment and
lifecycle management, including configuration, upgrades and patching of vRealize
Suite
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Constructs Mapping
As we all know there are lot of changes in the new modern architecture of vRealize
Automation 8.0 , this section gives you a quick relational understanding of constructs
used in older version of vRealize Automation with newer vRealize Automation 8.0 and
vRealize Automation Cloud effectively. The following module explains elaborately about
each concepts.
Summary
In this section, you learned about the new architecture and key features of vRealize
Automation 8.0.
Move onto the next lesson where we will understand the new terminologies/concepts
introduced in vRealize Automation 8.0 to simplify the IT service delivery through a
modern architecture.
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Update The Lab Files Repository If Not

Already Done
Some files that will be used in this lab are stored in an online repository. These files
must be copied over to the local repository on the Main Console server. **If you have
not already updated the local repository since you started this lab, follow the
steps below. If you have already updated the files, you can
Open GitHub Desktop
Open the GitHub Desktop application.
1. Double-click the GitHub Desktop icon on the desktop of your lab environment
desktop or click the GitHub Desktop icon in the taskbar of your lab environment
desktop
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Check the Online Repository For New Files
To check the online repository for updates,
1. Click Fetch origin
Pull Updates From the Online Repository
To synchronize the repository on the local machine with the online repository,
1. Click Pull origin
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Access Files In The Local Repository
Now the files have been synchronized to the local repository. You can now:
1. View and edit text files in the repository directly in the Microsoft Visual Studio
Code editor; or
2. Access the files in Windows Explorer
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Close GitHub Desktop
1. Click the X to close GitHub Desktop
Your files will still be accessible in the Lab Files folder on the desktop of the Main
Console computer or from Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
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Configure Public Cloud Accounts If Not

Already Done
When this lab pod comes online, vRealize Automation is running but public cloud
accounts are not yet configured. You will need to launch a script that will configure the
cloud accounts and associated components that will be referenced in the lab manual.
Please follow these steps only one time during the duration of this lab even if
you move on to another module in the lab manual. If you have already run the script to
create the public cloud accounts, please .
Minimize Open Windows
There is a shortcut on the desktop that you will use to execute the script.
If any windows are open so you can't see the desktop:
1. Click the bottom-right corner of the desktop next to the clock to minimize all
windows and show the desktop
Verify That the Lab Status is Ready
The lab must be in a Ready state in order for the script to work. The cloud accounts
cannot be configured until vRealize Automation is fully up and running. The way for you
to know that it is ready, is to check the status of the lab environment on the desktop.
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If you see anything other than Lab Status Ready on the desktop, do not proceed with
the following steps until the status changes to Ready.
Launch The Configuration Script
Once you have verified that the lab status is Ready, Double-click the icon on the
desktop titled Configure Cloud Accounts to launch the script in a command prompt
window.
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Successful Public Cloud Configuration
Hopefully your command prompt window will show that credentials were found and that
the public cloud related objects were created in vRealize Automation. If so, press any
key on your keyboard to close the window and then proceed with the lab.
There are a limited number of cloud accounts available for use with this Hands on Lab.
Depending on how many other people are taking the lab at the same time as you, there
may not be any credentials available now. If this is the case you will see output in the
command prompt window informing you that everything was successfully created. You
can still proceed with the lab but know neither the AWS nor the Azure public cloud
accounts will be available. If that happens, you can wait and try running the script again
later or stop the lab and re-launch it later.
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Understanding Cloud Accounts and

Cloud Zones
Cloud accounts are the configured permissions that Cloud Assembly uses to collect
data from public and private cloud resources, and to deploy blueprints to those
resources. Some cloud account vendors require a cloud proxy.
The collected data includes the regions and data stores that you later associate with
cloud zones.
When you later configure cloud zones, mappings, and profiles, you select the cloud
account to which they are associated.
As a Cloud Assembly cloud account administrator, you create cloud accounts for the
projects in which team members work. Resource information such as network and
security, compute, storage, and tags content is data-collected from your cloud
accounts.
A Cloud Assembly cloud zone is a set of resources within a cloud account type such as
AWS, Azure or vSphere.
Cloud zones in a specific account region are where your blueprints deploy workloads.
Each cloud zone is associated with a Cloud Assembly project.
Launch vRealize Automation 8.0
1. Launch chrome browser and click on the vRealize Automation bookmark
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Authentication
1. After clicking on the bookmark , you will be authenticated with the credentials :
holadmin/VMware1!
2. Click on Sign in button.
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Launch Cloud Assembly Component
1. Click on Cloud Assembly to understand more about designing a cloud agnostic

blueprint.
Navigating to Your Cloud Accounts
To get to the Cloud Accounts page:
1. Click the Infrastructure tab.

2. Click on the carats to minimize the Configure, Resources and Activity menus.
3. Select Cloud Accounts.
4. If you want to maximize your screen real estate at any point in time during this
lab, you hide the left hand menu using the minimize button.
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5. As you can see, we have images of two different display options which are
available in vRealize Automation Cloud - list and card view. The above display
represents the card view. You can toggle between list view and card view using
the icons in the upper right hand corner of the display.
6. Four cloud accounts have already been created including AWS, Azure, vSphere
and NSX-T. Let's click on the AWS Cloud Account cloud account (in the card
view) or click OPEN on the AWS Cloud Account card to look a little deeper.
AWS Cloud Account
While each account type has it's own key differentiators, this AWS cloud account is fairly
representative.
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1. In the status area, we can see both the last time that data and images were
synchronized with the cloud resource. We can also confirm that the resource is
available for deployment. There are buttons which allow us to force an image
sync as well as updating the availability status.
2. Each cloud provider has it's own method of authenticating. For AWS, we provide
for the required Access key ID and Secret access key used for authentication.
These credentials are both required for initial configuration of the cloud account
as well as making any configuration changes.
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More AWS Cloud Account Settings
On the lower page, we see some additional options.
1. A name needs to be provided for our cloud account. We also have the option to a
description.
2. We can select regions (or other compute resource types like clusters as relevant
to the cloud vendor) into which we want to allow provisioning.
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3. Lastly, we have the opportunity to provide any capability tags desired for the
cloud account. Capability tags enable you to define placement logic for
deployment of infrastructure components. They are a more powerful and
succinct option to hard coding such placements. In our current use case, we are
not using capability tags.
4. Let's click CANCEL to exit this cloud account configuration page.
Navigate to Cloud Zones
What is a Cloud Zone anyway?
Cloud Zones are a means of carving up the resources that Cloud Accounts present you.
As an example, you may have multiple clusters within a single vCenter. They probably
don't serve the same purpose, having been created for a functional or licensing
constraint. Dedicated Windows or Linux clusters are common patterns, as are clusters
placed in DMZs, or based on classifications. In security or compliance scenarios, these
clusters may all have their own vCenters, but there are many other use cases where
they will have a common vCenter.
If you have used vRealize Automation in the past and are thinking to yourself that Cloud
Zones sound like Reservations, fear not! Cloud Zones can be shared across multiple
groups of users, and are not limited by a 1:1 relationship.
1. Expand the Configure menu item and select Cloud Zones.

2. As you can see, we that four cloud zones have already been created. Let's click
on the AWS Cloud Zone / us-west-2 Cloud Zone to look a little deeper.
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AWS Cloud Zone
Three tabs are available on the Cloud Zones configuration page. The first tab is the
Summary tab, it contains basic information about the AWS account as configured.
1. You can see the Cloud Account for which this zone is configured.
2. Later in this lesson, we will use capability tags which are configured for the cloud
zone.
3. Now let's click on the Compute tab to take a look at the information configured
there.
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AWS Compute Tab
1. On the compute tab, we can see the compute resources which are associated
with this Cloud Zone. In the case of AWS, these compute resources are
Availability Zones. On this tab, we can configure additional capability tags to be
more specific about target resources.
2. Now let's click on the Projects tab to take a look at the information configured
there.
AWS Projects Tab
1. On the last tab, Projects, we can see that a project named HOL Project has
rights to deploy into this Cloud Zone. For vRealize Automation users, the project
is akin to a Business Group. As you can see, multiple projects can be given rights
to provision into a single Cloud Zone.
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2. Now that we have finished looking at the AWS Cloud Zone Cloud Zone, let's
click Cancel and continue on.
Summary
In this section, you learned about Cloud Accounts and Cloud Zones. Within your own
environment, you are likely to add multiple Cloud Accounts across AWS, Azure, GCP and
vCenter. Cloud Zones and Tags can be used together to inform placement decisions
when it comes to provisioning time.
Move onto the next lesson where we will configure some constructs that will allow us to
reuse blueprints across multiple cloud platforms.
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Understanding Projects In Cloud

Assembly
Projects control who has access to Cloud Assembly blueprints and where the blueprints
are deployed. You use projects to organize and govern what your users can do and
which cloud zones they can deploy blueprints to in your cloud infrastructure.
Cloud administrators set up the projects then add users and cloud zones. Anyone who
creates and deploys blueprints must be a member of at least one project.
Navigate to the Projects tab
If you are set up to view cards, you can see a summary of what has been configured for
each project. We have a project named HOL Project, configured in our organization.
Let's open it up and take a look at it.
1. Select Projects from the Configure menu.

2. Click on the OPEN button on the HOL Project tile.
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The HOL Project
We can now see that there are five tabs available for configuring projects. Below is an
overview of each of these tabs. Feel free to take a look around each of these tabs.
The Summary tab is the default tab. On this tab we have the ability to set or change the
project's name and define a description. We also see an overview of what has been
configured for this project.
The Users tab enables us to add users (by email address) and user groups to the
project. Each user or user group is granted either an administrator or member role.
The Provisioning tab enables us to configure Cloud Zones. Configuration of a Cloud Zone
includes setting a priority for provisioning into that cloud zone as well as an optional
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limit to the number of instances which may be provisioned into that Cloud Zone. The
Provisioning Tab also allows us to
• Set network, storage and extensibility constraints for provisioning requests

associated with the project
• Define custom properties for provisioning requests associated with the project
• Define a naming template for machines provisioned in the project
• Set a request timeout for provisioning requests associated with the project
The Kubernetes Provisioning tab enables us to assign an Kubernetes Zone to our project
thereby enabling project members to provision to K8's clusters to that Zone.
The Integrations tab lists any integrations with other tools (such as Jenkins, Artifactory,
git, etc.) that have been configured and attached to the project
Once you are done looking through the tabs,
1. Click CANCEL to close the trading project window
Summary
One of the most common questions that we get is what Projects should be centered
around. In truth, it comes down to your own organizational structure. Most people like to
align a project with a cost-code in order to track the budget. These could be project
related during the design and build phase, but may need to switch over to a different
cost center once it is released into production.
Like most good design decisions, take your time when you are considering this and
remember - you can easily change your approach!
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Understanding Mappings for Cloud

Abstraction
Flavor mappings and image mappings allow us to abstract sizing and image selection
across our Cloud Endpoints.
By associating a business relevant term to desired VM sizing, we are able to create a

cloud agnostic blueprint which will enable us to provision the appropriately sized VM in
any enabled endpoint.
Similarly Image mapping allows us to map a common term to a vSphere template, AWS
AMI, GC Image and/or an Azure VHD.
Flavor Mapping
A flavor mapping groups a set of target deployment sizing for a specific cloud account/
region in Cloud Assembly using natural language naming.
Flavor mapping lets you create a named mapping that contains similar flavor sizing
across your account regions. For example, a flavor map named standard_small might
contain a similar flavor sizing (such as 1 CPU, 2 GB RAM) for some or all available
account/regions in your project. When you build a blueprint, you pick an available flavor
that fits your needs.
Organize flavor mappings for your project by deployment intent.
Flavor Mappings are used to standardize the naming across different resource sizing
options for our machines.
We have one flavor mapping named micro configured in our organization. Let's take a
deeper look at it.
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1. In the Configure menu, select Flavor Mappings

2. Click on the OPEN button.
Flavor Mapping Configuration
As you can see, we have definitions created for AWS,Azure,vCenter. The micro flavor
mapping equates to a Standard_B1ms size in Azure and t2.nano in AWS. We will use this
flavor mapping in our blueprints.
1. Now that we are done looking at flavor mappings, click CANCEL.
Image Mapping
An image mapping groups a set of pre-defined target OS specifications for a specific

cloud account/region in Cloud Assembly by using natural language naming.
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Cloud vendor accounts such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services use images to
group a set of target deployment conditions together, including OS and related
configuration settings. vCenter and NSX-based environments, including VMware Cloud
on AWS, use a similar grouping mechanism to define a set of OS deployment
conditions. When you build and eventually deploy and iterate a blueprint, you pick an
available image that best fits your needs.
Organize image mappings for a project by similar operating system settings, tagging
strategy, and functional deployment intent.
To simplify blueprint creation, you can select a pre-configuration option when you add
a new cloud account. When you select the pre-configuration option, your organization's
most popular image mapping for the specified region are selected.
We have an image mapping called CentOS7 configured in our organization. Let's take a
deeper look at it.
1. Under the Configure menu, select Image Mappings

2. Click on the OPEN button.
Image Mapping Configuration
As you can see, we have definitions created for AWS , Azure and vCenter.
For public clouds, it would be typical to have your own images created and hardened to
your own specification. Alternatively, a CloudConfig configuration script can be created
to configure the image to your specifications. We will use this image mapping in our
blueprints.
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1. Now that we are done looking at flavor mappings, click CANCEL.
Summary
In this section, you learned about mappings for both Flavors and Images. If you would
like to create some more profiles of your own then feel free to experiment. When you
are ready, move to the next section to learn about Network Profiles.
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Understanding Network Profiles

A network profile defines a group of networks and network settings that are available for
a cloud account in a particular region or data center in Cloud Assembly.
You define network profiles to support a target deployment environment, for example a
small test environment where an existing network has outbound access only or a large
load-balanced production environment that needs a set of security policies. Think of a
network profile as a collection of workload-specific network characteristics.
Network Profiles
Let's take a deeper look at Network profiles.
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1. In the Configure menu, select Network Profiles

2. Click on the OPEN button in the vsphere-networks network profile.
Network Profile Configuration
We can now see that there are five tabs available for configuring network profiles. Below
is an overview of each of these tabs. Feel free to take a look around each of these tabs.
The Summary tab is the default tab. On this tab we can see the account/region for the
network profile. We can edit the name and description of our network profile as well as
setting tags which can be associated with constraints on a blueprint.
The Networks tab is used to configure the networks available in the associated cloud
account/region. A network here consists of a cloud account, IP address or range, and
network tags to control how and where to provision a blueprint deployment. Network
parameters in the profile define how machines in the deployment can communicate
with one another over IP layer 3. Individual networks within the profile can also have
tags which can be associated with constraints on a blueprint.
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The Network Policies tab enables us to configure cloud account specific options.
Depending on the associated cloud account, you can use network policies to define
settings for on-demand networks for the outbound, private, and routed network types
and for on-demand security groups.
The Load Balancers tab displays load balancers which have been data collected from
the cloud account. You can update load balancers in the blueprint YAML.
The Security Groups tab provides the capability to use a security group to further define
the isolation settings for a private or outbound network. Security groups are applied to
all the machines in the deployment that are connected to the network that matches the
network profile. As there might be multiple networks in a blueprint, each matching a
different network profile, you can use different security groups for different networks.
1. Once you are done looking through network profile configuration options, scroll to
the bottom of the network profile window and click on the CANCEL button.
Summary
Now that we have taken a look at our network profiles, we are ready to create our
Cloud-Agnostic blueprint.
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Conclusion
In this module, you learned about the new modern architecture of vRA 8.0 and its
various concepts to build a cloud agnostic blueprint. Now you are ready to move on to
one or more main modules of this lab to understand more on the features of vRA 8.0 by
performing hands on exercises.
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Module 2 - Building
Blueprints with Cloud
Assembly (45 minutes)
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Introduction
This Module will lead is focused on the Cloud Assembly constructs required to provision
to MultiCloud environments with cloud agnostic blueprints.
The Module contains the following lessons:
• Introduction
• Understanding Tagging in Cloud Assembly
• Creating your First Application Blueprint
• Conclusion
The first several sections of this module provide an introduction to the infrastructure
constructs which are configured in Cloud Assembly. These constructs have already been
created in our lab for AWS and Azure.
Lab Captains: Sam Aaron and Julienne Pham
Update the Lab File Repository
Some files that will be used in this lab are stored in an online repository. These files
must be copied over to the local repository on the Main Console server. **If you have
not already updated the local repository since you started this lab, follow the
steps below. If you have already updated the files, you can skip these steps and start
Introduction to Cloud-Agnostic Infrastructure-as-Code.
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Open GitHub Desktop
Open the GitHub Desktop application.
desktop or click the GitHub Desktop icon in the taskbar of your lab environment
desktop
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To check the online repository for updates,
To synchronize the repository on the local machine with the online repository,
1. Click Pull origin
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Now the files have been synchronized to the local repository. You can now:
Code editor; or
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Your files will still be accessible in the Lab Files folder on the desktop of the Main
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Introduction to Cloud-Agnostic
Infrastructure-as-Code
Define, Aggregate and Deploy across Clouds
Design cloud agnostic blueprints and provision workloads to any cloud based on the
defined policies is even easier in Cloud Assembly with vRealize Automation. Cloud
Assembly has the intelligence to take this cloud agnostic blueprint and know when to
place it where using which specific cloud components. You will be using the service to
deploy machines, applications, and services to your cloud vendor resources.
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Blueprint
How to define your infrastructure, you will be using blueprint to define, provision and
manage the lifecycle of resources. Whenever you author a blueprint, you are creating
YAML-based code, a human-readable data-serialization language. You can create the
blueprint through the UI or the YAML editor. Regardless of whether you drag and drop
resources on the visual canvas or if you write the YAML directly, the two designs are
always in sync and exactly reflect each other.
Cloud Assembly resource infrastructure
Deployments begin with blueprints, the specifications that define the machines,
applications, and services that you create on cloud resources by way of vRealize
Automation Cloud Assembly.
• Resource Types : resources that are exposed through data collection. It can be
Compute, Network, Security, Storage, Machine, Volume resources object that you
can configured and managed in your blueprint.
• Properties : related to the resources that you are interacting with. It can be
Machine Flavor, Machine Image etc.
• Tags : labels resource with capability tags to affect the blueprints.
• Cloud Zones : the zone where the resources will be provisioned.
• Inputs : User inputs when the service is deployed.
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Summary
You have seen all the Cloud assembly purposes and concept that will help you to
understand in the next module. You will go through the details about tagging how in a
large environment, a structure and a strategy should be defined to make the service
development faster and easier with a governance around it.
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Already Done
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window.
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Creating Your First Application

Blueprint
Blueprints are our way of describing a topology of components that need to be
provisioned for an application to run on. In this section you will create a new blueprint
and then work with some pre-configured abstractions to control where (and in some
cases how) these components are provisioned.
Navigate to Cloud Assembly
1. Click on Cloud Assembly.
VMware Cloud Assembly orchestrates and expedites infrastructure and application

delivery in line with DevOps principles. So we will create a blueprint from the Cloud
Assembly tile.
Create a New Blueprint
1. Click on the Blueprints tab to open up the initial Blueprints page.
You will note that there are a number of actions here apart from just the ability to create
or delete a blueprint. We will explore the other options later in this lab. For now, please:
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2. Click on the + New button, to create a new blueprint.
Add Blueprint Details
On this page, you need to enter some basic details about your blueprint. In the context
of this lab, the amount of information that you provide here is not going to have
significant impact on how you use the product. However, in a production environment
where the number of blueprints that you have would increase, adding details in the
Description field becomes far more useful, as you can search against this information.
1. In the Name field, type My First App.

2. In the Project drop-down, select HOL Project.
3. Click the Create button.
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Exploring the Blueprint Canvas
The blueprint canvas is split up into three main sections:
1. The Components panel, where you select the components that you want to use
for your application.
2. The Canvas, where your application infrastructure topology is represented.
3. The Editor where your YAML will be presented and modified.
There are two other useful items to be aware of on this page that will help you with
managing screen real estate.
4. The Components hide/show button; and

5. The Editor hide/show button. You may have noticed that the red box expands all
the way across the bar, and not just on the button. This has been done because
you can click anywhere on the bar to minimize these panels. Hide or show these
panels as you see fit throughout the lab to make viewing relevant content easier.
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YAML Backup
Note that if you have any trouble creating the blueprint in the following steps, the full
YAML definition is available in the Lab Files directory on your lab console desktop. You
can open the file, copy the YAML and paste it directly into the blueprint if needed.
Hopefully you will be able to build the blueprint from scratch using the following
instructions but know that if you need help, the file is here.
1. Note the 2073-02-M2-FirstApp.yaml file in the Lab Files folder on the desktop
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Add a vSphere Cloud Machine
1. Drag a Machine object from the vSphere section onto the canvas.
2. You will see the YAML description automatically populated. Hover your mouse
over the properties field. You will notice that it is a hyperlink. Click on it and see
that you get a list of all available properties that can be defined for this object
type. After you are done looking at the content in the pop-up box, click anywhere
in the blueprint area to close the pop-up box.
Edit the YAML Description
1. Click between the single quotes on the image field. You will see the list of images
that have been defined in vRealize Automation and have been made available to
the Project you are working in
2. Click to select CentOS7. Note that if there were other Image Mappings available
for this project, they would also be displayed in the list.
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Add a Constraint
Constraints allow you to specify parameters that must match a tag on a the
infrastructure (a Cloud Zone for example). The constraint is a way to force vRealize
Automation to only deploy the blueprint to infrastructure that has a matching tag.
1. Place your cursor after the totalMemoryMB: 1024 property and press the Enter
key to add a new line in your YAML that is aligned under the properties section
then type con and pause so see the auto-populate options
2. Click to select constraints: from the list
Add a Constraint Tag to the Virtual Machine
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In our environment, we have applied the "compute:vsphere" tag to the our two compute
clusters in the vRA-Managed vSphere Compute cloud zone but not to our management
hosts or cluster. By using that constraint tag in our blueprint, we will ensure that the
virtual machine gets provisioned to our compute clusters and not to our management
cluster.
1. Press the Enter key to add a new line under constraints:

2. Click tag: to add a tag constraint
3. Click the compute:vsphere tag to select it
Note that you could also have typed the tag value here and if the tag had not previously
been defined in vRealize Automation, it would have been created at that point.
Be aware that YAML is whitespace sensitive, and incorrect indenting may lead to issues
with provisioning. If you do make a mistake, you should see a red exclamation appear
beside the line where the mistake has been made. Try it out now if you like by adding an
extra space before image. Resolve the error and move to the next page.
Also remember that the full YAML definition for this blueprint is available in the Lab Files
directory on the desktop of your lab console if you have any difficulties creating it
yourself
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Add a Network
Since we will want our virtual machine to be attached to a network, we need to add a
network object to the blueprint.
1. Drag a Network object from the vSphere section onto the canvas.
2. To attach your Machine object the the network, hover over the white circle on
the left hand side of the Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1 box, and then click and drag
the circle onto the Cloud_vSphere_Network_1 box.
3. You will see the YAML definition for the network itself and for the networks section
added to your VM resource.
Our Configured Network Profile
In this environment we have configured the vsphere-networks Network Profile with

three different networks that were discovered in vSphere. There is no need to verify this
but if you want to, you can do so on the Infrastructure tab.
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1. In the image, note that we have applied the "net:vsphere-vm" tag (as well as
some others) to the VM-RegionA01-vDS-COMP vSphere network. This is the
network we will want to attach our machine to so we will be using this tag.
2. In addition, note that for the above network, we have defined an IP range from
192.168.120.100-192.168.120.199. This range will act as a pool from which
vRealize Automation can assign static IP addresses to virtual machines using this
network
Configure the Network
Now it's time to configure the network object.
1. Use what you have learned about YAML editing to add a new entry on the
vSphere Machine object under -network to set the IP address assignment to
static
2. Use what you have learned about YAML editing to add a new constraint tag
"net:vsphere-vm" to the vSphere Network object
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Finish Your Blueprint
1. Once that is complete, click on the VERSION button to begin the versioning
process.
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Version Your Blueprint
Now that your basic configuration has been setup, it would be a good idea to capture
the state it is in as a version 1 blueprint.
1. In the Version field set it to 1

2. In the Change log text box, type Initial Configuration.
3. Click on CREATE.
We will look at versioning in more detail later in the lesson, including how you can
identify differences between versions.
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Test Your Blueprint
1. Click on Test to validate your blueprint.
Close the test window once you have validated the blueprint.
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Deploy Your Blueprint
It's time to deploy the blueprint.
1. Click the DEPLOY button
Deployment Information
1. In the Deployment name field, enter simple blueprint.

2. Select Current Draft in the Blueprint Version field.
3. Click on the DEPLOY button.
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Explore Your Deployment
The deployment will take a few minutes to come up. Note that due to browser zoom and
rendering in this lab environment, you might not see the linkage between the vSphere
Machine and the vSphere network in the topology diagram. Rest assured that the
linkage is still there.
If you want to, you can open a new browser tab, log in to the vSphere Client and see the
machine being deployed there.
1. Once the deployment has successfully deployed, you will see the status change
to "Create Successful". You may need to click the refresh icon to the right of the
Actions drop-down in order to get the status to update.
2. Click on the Cloud vSphere Machine object to highlight it
3. Take a look at the information panel to the right. Your deployment should be
powered on and you can see details about the virtual machine. If you scroll down
in the information pane, there is additional information to explore.
4. Note that the machine will have an IP address assigned from the static IP pool we
saw above
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View Available Actions
In the information panel, you can also access a list of actions that you can take on the
virtual machine
1. Click the Actions link to see the list of available actions. Note that this list can be
modified via policies in the Service Broker module of vRealize Automation.
2. Click Connect to Remote Console
This will open a new tab in your browser with a remote console session to the deployed
virtual machine. You can log in if you want (login: root / Password: VMware1!) and run a
command like ip addr show to verify the assigned IP address.
When you are done with the console, just close the console browser tab.
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Increase the Number of Machine Instances
We are now going to modify the blueprint to increase the number of deployed virtual
machines to two.
1. On the Blueprints tab,

2. Click the vSphere Machine on the canvas to select it
3. In the panel, click Properties to open the properties pane. Note that if you find it
easier to build and modify your blueprint with forms and fields instead of by
editing YAML code, you might prefer to work in this tab.
4. Click the toggle to Show all properties
5. In the Count field, change the value to 2
6. Note that on the canvas, the image for the vSphere machine changes from a
single box to stacked boxes. This is an indication that the object count is greater
than one.
7. You can click on the Code tab if you want and see that the YAML definition was
updated with the count: 2 property
8. Click TEST to test your blueprint for proper syntax
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Test Results
1. Your blueprint test should return Successful. If it doesn't, address the issue
before proceeding.
2. Click the X to close the test window
Version Your Blueprint
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Let's version the blueprint
1. Click the VERSION button

2. In the Version field, set the version 2
3. In the Change Log text box, type Changed VM count to 2
4. Click the CREATE button
Update the Deployment
vRealize Automation gives you the option of updating an existing deployment. So

instead of having to delete or current deployment with a single VM, we can update the
deployment by applying this revised blueprint.

2. From the deployment type drop-down select Update an existing deployment.
3. In the Blueprint version field, select version 2
4. Click the radio button next to simple blueprint
5. Click the NEXT button.
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View the Plan
At this stage, you will be notified of additions, changes or deletions that will occur.
1. Expand the Adds and Deletes sections to see what changes will be made to the
deployment
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Wait Patiently
This will take a little longer.
1. As the provisioning is progressing, click History to expand the request history.
Request History
You will see all the task list and request in progress related to your request and how long
it takes.
1. Click on Provisioning diagram link
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Navigation of Request Details
1. Scroll down to review the request information.
2. Click the Dev mode toggle to see additional information
If you have a resource mapping issue, you will see the resource error on this view.
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Request Details in Dev mode
Navigate the Request Details to get familiar to the request workflow.
1. Close the provisioning diagram when you are done exploring the page
If the request failed, you should be able to see on this view which steps in your blueprint
have problems.
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Clean Up
Once your deployment updates successfully, you can explore the details either here on
the deployment page or in the vSphere Client.
To ensure you have enough resources for future tasks in this lab, you will need to clean
up your deployment.
1. Click on the Actions drop-down

2. Click to Delete the deployment
3. We are going to take another look at versioning, so click on the Blueprints tab.
Blueprint Version History
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The version history for each blueprint is stored with the blueprint.
1. In order to access it, click on Version History.
Reviewing Version Differences
1. To get started, select version 2.

2. Click Diff to see the differences between the versions
3. In the Diff against drop-down, select 1.
This shows the differences in the YAML between the two blueprint versions. Scroll down
and take a look at the changes that have occurred. The detailed diff is quite valuable,
but doesn't lend itself to a quick view of what has changed.
4. Click on Diff Visually
Visual Differences
Now this is a nice way to see what changed between versions!
Wrapping it Up
In this lesson, you learned how to configure Cloud Assembly to get it ready for
provisioning, how to navigate the blueprint canvas to create, version and deploy
blueprints.
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Next up, we will configure all of the abstractions that are required in order to provide
cloud agnostic blueprints - blueprints that can be deployed to different public and
private clouds depending on conditions.
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Creating A Cloud Agnostic Blueprint

Now that you have seen how to create a simple blueprint for a virtual machine workload
within an on-premise environment, Rainpole management and developers need you to
create a blueprint that can be deployed both on-premise and in your public clouds
(Amazon: AWS and Azure).
You are probably already thinking about the number of blueprints that you will need to
spawn up to make this happen. Hold that thought. A new feature in vRealize Automation
8 allows you to create a single blueprint that can be deployed to multiple endpoints,
such as your on-premise vSphere or the public cloud environments.
Let's see how this is done.
Verify the Agnostic Constructs
Before we can create the blueprint, we want to make sure that the Agnostic Constructs
are available for consumption. From the previous module (Module 1 - Foundation -
Getting Started with vRealize Automation), you have already viewed many of the
constructs; however, we want to make sure we are ready.
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1. Click the Infrastructure tab

2. On the left, choose Projects.
3. Find the HOL Project and click Open.
HOL Project Summary
Click the Provisioning tab
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HOL Project Provisioning
1. Under the Cloud Zones section, you should see multiple cloud zones (AWS,
Azure, and vRA Managed vSphere) available for the project.
2. Each Cloud Zone, should have a priority of 1 and be configured with limited
instances and unlimited memory
3. On the far right, each Cloud Zone, should have Capability Tags. As we saw in
the previous section, these tags can be used as constraints in the blueprints to
dictate where an object gets provisioned. This is an important construct that we
will use in this lesson.
4. Scroll down and select Cancel (not pictured in the screenshot).
NOTE: The next module will discuss Tags in greater detail. For now, we just want to
make sure that each Cloud Zone is configured for the project.
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Image Mappings
1. Locate the Image Mappings in the left side menu.

2. Find the CentOS7 Image Maps, and click Open.
CentOS 7 Image Mapping
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Image Mappings are a replacement to the old image components of vRealize

Automation 7.x. However, this time, it has some real power to it. Notice that the images
map to specific vSphere templates, as well as to Azure Cloud VM and Amazon AMI
templates. This is a huge improvement over the old ability. And that is what we want to
check to ensure that we ready to create blueprints.
Note that all of these mappings point to a CentOS 7 machine in the respective clouds.
1. Click Cancel to proceed.
New Blueprint
Let's create a new blueprint that will be cloud-agnostic (able to provision to different
cloud endpoints).
1. On the Blueprints tab,

2. Click + New.
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Blueprint Details
1. Provide a name for the blueprint. Type Cloud Agnostic Blueprint

2. As an option, you can provide a description for the Blueprint. This description will
be displayed in the Catalog within the Service Broker (covered in another module
in this lab).
3. Select the HOL Project
4. Click Create.
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Cloud Agnostic Machine
In the previous lesson, we created a blueprint that was specific to vSphere

environments. We used a vSphere Machine object and a vSphere Network object. By
using vSphere-specific object types, we actually had a lot of options for configuring
those options but that blueprint could only successfully have been deployed to a
vSphere environment. This time we will use Cloud Agnostic objects. This will allow us to
deploy the blueprint to different types of environments (like vSphere, AWS, Azure or
GCP) but we will have fewer configuration options because the blueprint needs to be
more flexible. When creating your own blueprints, you should consider whether you
need the flexibility of multiple endpoints (cloud agnostic) or whether you want
additional configuration options that are specific to your endpoints (AWS Lambda
function or Azure SQL Database for example).
1. From the object Inventory, locate the Cloud Agnostic > Machine and drag it to
the center of the canvas.
2. If done correctly, you should see a Cloud_Machine_1 object on the screen.
3. Take a look at the YAML code for this machine.
Note: As in the previous lesson there is a file in the Lab Files folder on the desktop that
contains the YAML for this lesson. If you need help, the file is 2073-02-M2-Cloud-
Agnostic.yaml.
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Set the CentOS7 Image
We are going to start out creating this blueprint to deploy in the local vSphere
environment and then expand the blueprint to add the ability to deploy into AWS as
well.
Let's set the machine image.
1. To the right of image, you will notice a set of single quotes (').
2. Click inside the quotes, and you will notice a selection of image resources
available for the blueprint. Go ahead and select CentOS7.
NOTE: While Ubuntu is available to be selected, CentOS7 is the only operating system
that has been configured in all destinations. If you select Ubuntu, you will not be able
to deploy this operating system within the on-premise vSphere location.
Complete The Code
Let's complete the code for a simple deployment to vSphere. Using what you have
learned about editing the YAML definitions,
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1. Set the flavor to small and add a constraint tag of

'hol.cloud.zone.platform:vsphere'
Test The Blueprint
1. Click TEST to see if our blueprint has proper syntax and available placement
options
When the test is complete, close the test window.
Try A Different Location
Change the constraints tag to 'hol.cloud.zone.platform:azure' to change the location

of where the virtual machine workload will be deployed. Re-Test!
Change the constraints tag to or 'hol.cloud.zone.platform:aws'. Test again.
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As a reminder, our environment is configured with tags on the various cloud zones and
compute endpoints so by changing the constraint tag on the blueprint, you are testing
whether a matching tag exists on the infrastructure.
Version The Blueprint
Ensure that the constraints tag is for the AWS cloud zone then,
1. Click VERSION to version the blueprint
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Version 1.0
1. Set the Version of the blueprint to 1.0

2. (Optional) Add a description to summarize the blueprint. This is a good idea for
Blueprint Administrators to easily keep track of their blueprint inventory. Add a
name and date of who and when the blueprint was created.
3. (Optional) Add a description to summarize the changes between the versions. In
this example, we tested the blueprint for each destination that the workload
could be deployed to.
4. When ready, click Create to create the blueprint version.
5. NOT PICTURED: When the version is created, you are returned to the blueprint
canvas with a green banner that will appear at the top of the screen for a brief
few seconds indicating the version was successful.
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Deploy The Blueprint
Now that the blueprint has been tested and versioned, let's deploy a virtual machine
workload. In the lower left of the Blueprint Canvas Page, click Deploy.
Deploy Cloud Agnostic Blueprint
The deployment wizard will appear. Fill in the details as noted:
1. Select Create a new deployment. This should be the default option. It will allow
you to deploy a new workload.
2. Provide a name for the deployment in the Deployment Name field. This will be
the name of the deployment container object seen in the Deployments tab when
completed.
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3. Under the Blueprint Version, you have the option to change the version of the
active blueprint. This would allow you to try something different during blueprint
deployment.
4. Providing a Description in this field, will generate information about the
deployment in the Deployments tab when completed.
5. Click DEPLOY to create the new machine in AWS.
Deployment Details
This deployment will be much faster than your vSphere deployment in the previous
lesson. Provisioning to AWS is very fast with vRealize Automation.
1. Once the deployment completes, a Successful badge will appear in the progress
bar.
2. Click Cloud_Machine_1 object on the canvas
3. Note the deployment details with important information, such as the IP Address,
region, etc. Since this HOL environment is firewalled with very specific internet
addresses whitelisted, you will not be able to open the AWS console for this
machine.
4. Click the History tab.
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Deployment History
During the deployment provisioning, the History tab can provide detailed progress
information.
Click Close.
Deployment Tab
You are returned to the Deployments tab where each of the Project's deployments are
displayed. For the virtual machine that we just deployed, you can observe summarized
details about the provisioning. Notice the following details:
• Deployment Name
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• Deployment Description: Cloud Agnostic Blueprint Deployment

• Under Resource: the VM name (In this example, it is
Cloud_Machine_1-mcm650-1304505292.. - Cloud_Machine_1 is the name of
the virtual machine object and was passed to the virtual machine with a random
signature attached for the virtual machine name. This can be changed using tags,
or properties which will be discussed in later lessons from this lab. This is
expected from the default OOTB configuration.)
• The IP Address is also displayed.
When deploying a virtual workload, using the same Deployment Name may get
confusing after a couple of provisions. Maybe try replacing the Deployment Name with
a ticket number from your CMDB, or possibly the Project Name (i.e., Project Metropolis)
or Project "App Name" (i.e., Project Sharknado v4.0) used with the project.
Additionally, adding a Point of Contact (POC) or information about the workload in the
Description field may help clarify any confusion down the road.
Clean Up
Unfortunately, here in Hands On Labs, we do not have the luxury of an unlimited

amount of resources. Because of this, we will need to clean up our deployment before
we can continue.
1. Locate Actions along the right hand side of the Deployment Container Object
and click it.
2. In the drop down menu, click Delete to delete the deployment
Moving On ...
Yay! Pat yourself on the back! At this point, you have successfully created a Cloud
Agnostic Blueprint that can be deployed in a public Cloud, such as Amazon (AWS) and
Azure, or an on-premise vSphere environment. You also noticed that we were able to
perform these tasks with a single simple Cloud Agnostic Blueprint -- without the need of
blueprint sprawl and an individual blueprint for each of our destinations.
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Feel free to perform this module again and redeploy the same Cloud Agnostic Blueprint
to each of the destinations, or if you would like, you can proceed onto the next lesson.
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Managing your resource infrastructure

with tags
We have used constraint tags in the last two lessons to dictate where (which cloud
zones) vRealize Automation placed the objects when our blueprints were deployed.
In this lesson, we are going to spend some more time exploring tags and discussing
some best practices around managing your tags. You will discover a new way to manage
your virtual machine metadata. Fundamentally, tags are labels that you add to vRealize
Automation Cloud Assembly items. You can create any tags that are appropriate for your
Organization and implementation. Tags function as much more than labels though,
because they control how and where vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly uses
resources and infrastructure to build deployable services. Tags also support governance
within Cloud Assembly.
Tags are a critical component that drive the placement of deployments through the
matching of capabilities and constraints so you must carefully plan and implement an
appropriate tagging strategy based on your organization's IT structure and goals to
maximize Cloud Assembly functionality and minimize potential confusion.
Tag Overload
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In the new platform, there are tags, capability tags, constraint tags, standard tags,
project tags, project constraint tags, and custom properties. There is a bit of tag
overload going on here. Some of these tags are used in placement decisioning, some of
them propagate from higher level objects and go on to set tags on the endpoint itself,
and some of them do not. Each of the referenced tag types are defined as follows:
• Capability tags: enable you to define placement logic for deployment of

infrastructure components.
• Constraint tags: apply to blueprints and various other components within
vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly to match capabilities defined on resources,
cloud zones, and profiles to generate appropriate deployments.
• Standard tags: unique within vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly. These tags
are stored as system custom properties, and they are added to deployments after
provisioning.
• Project Resource Tags: A project resource tag operates as a standardized
identifying tag that you can use to manage the deployed resources and ensure
compliance.
• Project Constraint Tags: A project constraint operates as a governance
definition. It is a key:value tag that defines what resources the deployment
request consumes or avoids in the project cloud zones.
Tag-based Capability and Constraint Functionality
The primary function of tags is to configure deployments using capabilities and

constraints. These are really the same thing, just referred to differently based on what
you’re doing and where you are in the Cloud Assembly interface.
• Capability Tags are used in Cloud Accounts, Integrations, Cloud Zones, Network/
Storage Profiles
• Constraint Tags are used in Image Profiles, Projects and Blueprints
Capability tags placed on cloud zones, network and storage profiles, and individual
infrastructure resources define desired capabilities for deployments.
Constraint tags that cloud administrators place on projects enable them to exercise a
form of governance over those projects. These constraint tags are added to other
constraints expressed in blueprints.
Typically you would create tags for things like:
• Different platforms: AWS, Azure, vSphere

• Different compute resources: linux-cluster, windows-cluster, database-cluster
• Different environments : PROD, DEV, TEST
• Storage tags: Tier 1/Tier 2/Tier 3, Gold, Bronze, Silver, SSD
• Networking tags: DMZ, public, private appX-net
During provisioning, Cloud Assembly matches these capabilities with constraints in

blueprints to define deployment configuration. This tag-based capability and constraint
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functionality serves as the foundation for deployment configuration in Cloud Assembly

(e.g., you can use tags to make infrastructure available only on specific resources in a
particular region).
NOTE: Tags also facilitate search and identification of storage items, network items, and
other infrastructure resources.
Constraint Tag Types
There are two main areas where constraint tags are applicable.
• The first is on the configuration side in projects and images.

• The second is on the deployment side in blueprints.
Constraints applied in both areas are merged in blueprints to form a set of deployment
requirements.
Constraints in both projects and blueprints can be of the following types:
• hard - rigidly enforced

• soft - preferred if available
• ! - negative / not logic
By default all constraints are hard. Hard constraints allow you to rigidly enforce
deployment restrictions. If one or more hard constraints are not met, the deployment
will fail. Soft constraints express preferences that apply if available, but they won't fail if
not met.
Synced Tags
The tags property (not to be confused with the constraint tag) allows for the addition of
tags for deployed resources in the corresponding public cloud account (AWS, Azure, etc).
It supports tags on the following resources:
• Machines
• Volumes
• Load Balancers
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• Network (does not appear unless using an on-demand network)
Tags are case sensitive.
Tags are synched both ways, to and from the remote cloud account to the Cloud
Assembly Tags Management list.
Discovered External Tags
External Tags are imported automatically from public cloud accounts that you
associate with a vRealize Automation 8 instance. These tags might be imported from
vSphere, AWS, Azure or other external endpoints. When imported, these tags are
available for use in the same manner as user created tags.
Network Resource Tags are written back to provisioned resources when they are created
in the cloud infrastructure and contain key/value pairs.
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Be careful when modifying or creating/naming tags in AWS on subnet resources.

These will be synced back to vRealize Automation 8 in the network profile.
NOTE: Take care not to create tags and values in your AWS console that might be used
for placement decisions in vRealize Automation 8.
Standard Tags
Standard tags are applied to some deployments to support analysis, monitoring, and
grouping of deployed resources. These tags are used under the hood by vRealize
Automation for internal sorting and when calculating placement decisions.
Standard tags are unique within vRealize Automation. Unlike other tags, users do not
work with them during deployment configuration, and no constraints are applied.
These tags are applied automatically during provisioning on AWS, Azure, and vSphere
deployments.
Standard tags are automatically stored as system custom properties, and they are
added to deployments after provisioning.
How Do Tags Work
Cloud Assembly uses a specific order and hierarchy in resolving tags to create
provisioned deployments. Understanding the basics of this process will help you to
implement tags efficiently to create predictable deployments.
• Cloud zones are filtered by several criteria, including availability and profiles;
tags in profiles for the region the zone belongs to are matched at this point.
• Zone and compute capability tags are used to filter the remaining cloud zones
by hard constraints.
• Out of the filtered zones, priority is used to select a cloud zone. If there are
several cloud zones with the same priority, they are sorted by matching soft
constraints, using a combination of the cloud zone and compute capabilities.
• After a cloud zone is selected, a host is selected by matching a series of filters,
including hard & soft constraints as expressed in blueprints.
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If tags on the project conflict with the tags in the blueprint, the tags from the project
take precedence.
Similar to priority matches, if multiple resources meet a hard constraint, soft

constraints are used as a tie-breaker to select the actual resource used in the
deployment.
Let's Play
Now that we have covered what kind of tags exist within vRealize Automation, let's put
them to use. Before we begin, there is a pre-built blueprint that we need to import that
will help us with the demonstration.
Import Blueprint
1. On the Blueprints page,

2. Locate the Upload button and click it.
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Upload Wizard
Enter the following details:
1. Name: Tag Blueprint

2. Description: (Optional) Pre-built Blueprint to test tagging
3. Project: HOL Project (Select from list)
4. Upload File: Click on No file chosen

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Choose File
1. In navigation pane, open the Main Console --> Desktop --> Lab Files folder
2. Locate the file named 2073-02-M2-TagBlueprint.yaml and select it.
3. Click Open

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Upload
Review the information and verify the wizard contains the Name and Project, as well as
the file that was just selected.
1. Click the UPLOAD button

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After Blueprint Import
1. Locate the new Tag Blueprint and click the name to open it.
Review the blueprint

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The blueprint consists of an On-Prem (vSphere) VM and a Cloud VM. The On-Prem VM is
attached to a network. This hybrid cloud blueprint is designed to create a VM in
vSphere, and a VM in the public cloud.
Review the YAML Code
When reviewing the YAML code, you will notice the properties of each virtual machine
object, both the On-Prem and the Cloud VMs.
1. Take note of the tags that were assigned to both virtual machines.
2. Also review the inputs. Inputs are properties that are presented on the request
form to be selected at the time of provisioning.

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The input parameters are combined with the tag and completes the entire tag name.
Notice that the tags, have been defined as hard and soft.
Be careful when you mix and match soft and ! constraints as you are letting the
deployment engine chose “loosely” placements for your resource, especially for multi-
resource blueprints.
Testing the Blueprint
1. Locate and click the Test button on the bottom left of the Blueprint Canvas.
Please do not deploy any virtual machines. The Test functionality will allow us to
observe the necessary settings without the need to deploy.

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Blueprint Inputs
The request form for the Blueprint will require user input of a T-Shirt Size, the
Platform, and the Environment.
• Because of the limitations of resources in the lab, the VM sizes are "micro" and
"small". However, these choices will not affect the provisioning of the virtual
machines.
• The platform choice is limited to Amazon (AWS) and vSphere.
• The environment was limited to just Dev for a development instance.
1. Set the platform to vSphere

2. Click TEST
Review the results

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Once the test has completed, you should see a successful result highlighted in green.
1. A really cool feature of the testing functionality is the ability to observe the
Provisioning Diagram. Click this link.
Request Details
The request details will display the various objects that make up the provision request.
As you can see in this example, the details start with the Network Allocation. If you
remember from the YAML code, the On-Prem VM was supposed to be configured on an
existing network using vsphere-networks. From this example, that network was
selected.

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Virtual Machine Details
1. Locate Machine Allocation and click it. A dropdown menu will appear allowing
you to click on the details for either the onpremvm or the cloudvm.
2. Select the onpremvm.
On-Prem VM Details

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Review the details of the virtual machine. Notice the constraint tags for each of the
objects. Scroll down.
Placement is decided by matching tags with the various objects. In this example, the
tags: hol.cloud.zone.env:dev, hol.cloud.zone.platform:vsphere were matched
with the request, placing this machine on the vSphere platform.
Select the Cloud VM

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Scroll up and select the other virtual machine.
1. Select Machine Allocation

2. Choose the cloudvm option.
Cloud VM Details

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Again, review the details of the objects that were selected for the virtual machine. Also,
take note of the constraint tags for each of the objects. Scroll down
1. The constraint tag that matched for this object was hol.cloud.zone.env:dev
and hol.cloud.zone.platform:aws. The expression in the tag forces aws to
always be selected, no matter which platform was chosen.
2. Click the CLOSE button

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Return to the Blueprint
Now we want to try the test again but this time selecting AWS as the platform.
1. On the Blueprints tab

2. Close the test window
3. Click TEST to run another test of the blueprint

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Try the Test Again
1. This time chose aws as the Platform

2. Click the TEST button
Provisioning Diagram
Once the test completes,
1. Click the Provisioning Diagram link.

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Select the On-Prem VM
The details will again start with the Network Allocation. Feel free to review the details of
the network allocation.
1. Select Machine Allocation.

2. From the drop-down menu, choose onpremvm.

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On-Prem Details
Scroll down. Notice the tags: hol.cloud.zone.env:dev and

hol.cloud.zone.platform:aws. The tag; hol.cloud.zone.env:dev was matched,
however, the tag: hol.cloud.zone.platform:aws was not matched. But due to the
constraint type :soft being added to the blueprint. The provision was able to succeed
without the tag matching.

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Select the Cloud VM
Scroll up.
1. Select Machine Allocation.

2. From the dropdown menu, choose the cloudvm.

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Cloud VM Details

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Scroll down to observe the cloud zone.
Again, you notice that the cloudvm is placed in Amazon (AWS). The VM was placed in
AWS for the same reason as the first test. The expression in the tag forces AWS to
always be selected, no matter which platform was chosen. But the constraint type on
the vSphere tag allows us to successfully provision VMs between the platforms.
Summary
From here, you can clean up any provisioned virtual machines. Yes, please delete them -
- especially if you deployed anything to the public cloud.
From this lesson, you may have realized, that tags are more prevalent and more
powerful than ever in vRealize Automation 8. Tags can be used to formulate a computer
hostname, or as shown - can help determine placement of virtual machines during
deployment. Tags are driven by business needs and requirements. It is recommended to
carefully plan, map out, educate, and implement an appropriate tagging strategy based
on those needs to maximize vRealize Automation functionality.
A couple of recommendations for your tagging strategy:

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• There is no one rule or naming convention for how and where to create tags.
• Keep them simple and descriptive.
Want to learn more about tags? Here's a few links that can help you with the subject
(each link opens in a new window):
• VMware Cloud Assembly Deep Dive in under 60 minutes

• Understanding and Using Tags
• AWS Tag Naming Strategies
• Using constraint tags in Cloud Assembly
• vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly blueprint expression syntax
• How to use expressions to make vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly blueprint
code more versatile

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Conclusion
In this module, you learned about how Cloud Assembly allows you to create reusable,
cloud agnostic blueprints. You looked at the back end configuration of storage,
networks, images and flavors to support this, and got stuck into blueprints - learning
about using tags and constraints, versioning and iteration. Well done on completing the
module!
You have finished Module 2
Congratulations on completing Module 2.
You can page forward to the next module or select one of the links below to jump to the
module of your choice.

• Module 3 - Integration with GitHub and NSX-T On-Demand Networking (45
minutes)
• Module 6 - Integrating Development Tools into Code Stream Pipelines (30
minutes)
Or, if you would like to end the lab, see the next page.
How to End Lab
1. To end your lab click on the END button at the top of your lab console

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Module 3 - Integration
with GitHub, NSX-T On-
Demand Networking and
Infoblox (45 minutes)

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Introduction
This Module will focus on configuring Cloud Assembly with a GitHub repository, syncing
GitHub to make available a blueprint, and deploying a blueprint that demonstrates
integration between Cloud Assembly and NSX-T.
It is not necessary to complete previous modules before continuing to this

Module. Module 3 configures a vRealize Automation 8 environment for
integration with GitHub and NSX-T.
The Module contains the following lessons:
• Introduction
• Overview of GitHub Integration and configuration in Cloud Assembly
• Synchronize GitHub sourced blueprint to Cloud Assembly
• Overview of vRealize Automation 8 and NSX-T On-Demand-Network Integration
• Review and Deploy in Cloud Assembly with NSX-T On-Demand Networking
• Validate and test CentOS deployments with NSX-T On-Demand Networking
• Infoblox Overview
• Configure IPAM Infoblox Plugin
• Review Infoblox Prerequisites and Configure Cloud Assembly Network Profile
• Deploy Infoblox CentOS VM
• Conclusion
Lab Captain: Michael Patton and Randy Snyder

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Overview GitHub Integration and

Configuration in Cloud Assembly
In this section, you will discover how leveraging the integration with GitHub and
vRealize Automation 8: Cloud Assembly provides ease of creation, editing and source
control in syncing blueprints. While this is an overview, in subsequent sections, you will
configure the GitHub Integration with Cloud Assembly and synchronize a blueprint for
On-Demand Networking deployments.
Overview of GitHub Integration
When Git integration is configured with an existing repository, all blueprints associated
with selected projects become available to qualified users. You can use these blueprints
with an existing deployment or as the basis of a new deployment. When you add a
project, you must select some properties regarding where and how it is stored in Git.
You can save actions to a Git repository directly from vRealize Automation Cloud
Assembly. You can version action scripts either directly to Git, or you can create versions
in vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly. If you create a version of an action in vRealize
Automation Cloud Assembly, then it is automatically saved to Git as a version.
Blueprints are a bit more complicated, because you cannot directly add them to a Git
integration from vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly. You must commit them outside of

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vRealize Automation to a Git repository, and then you can retrieve them from Git when
working with the blueprint management page in vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly.
Tips for Success in Syncing GitHub and Cloud Assembly
You must create and save your blueprints in a specific structure in order for them to be
detected by GitHub.
Configure and store Blueprints to be integrated with GitHub correctly. Only valid
blueprints are imported into GitHub.
• Create one or more designated folders for the blueprints.

• All blueprints must be in a file with the name blueprint.yaml.
• Ensure that there are two lines near the top of your blueprints that include the
name: and version: properties.
The following guidelines must be observed for all blueprints used with GitHub
integration.
• Only valid blueprint are imported and Cloud Assembly may prompt for blueprint
corrections in the event of an error (such as format or incorrect syntax).
• In making changes to a blueprint in GitHub repository - version control
incremented number is reflected in Cloud Assembly Blueprints.
Example Review of a GitHub Repository
For a high level review, let's explore an example blueprint within a GitHub repository
and Cloud Assembly
• The first is on the GitHub side in projects and images.

• The second is on the Cloud Assembly side in blueprints.

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GitHub is highlighted below as an example of a public facing repository as a source

control for vRealize Automation 8: Cloud Assembly Blueprints. The following points
reference important information that is highlighted later in this module.
1. This GitHub repository is represented as vrealize-hol / hol-2073-blueprints.

2. Within the above directory, a subfolder "on-demand-network" is found the
blueprint.yaml file.
3. Within the blueprint.yaml file, take note as referenced above a specific name:
CentOS-On-Demand-Network and version: 1
vRealize Automation 8: Cloud Assembly Blueprint is highlighted below as an example of

source controlled by GitHub synced to Cloud Assembly: Blueprints.

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Example Review of Synced Blueprint
The initial setup of GitHub integration for a project in Cloud Assembly syncs the target
blueprint.
1. As edits/changes are made to the blueprint in the GitHub repository, SYNC

REPOS is clicked to initiate a sync and is reflected through different versions.
2. In this example, there are three versions of the blueprint CentOS-On-Demand-
Network. (in this lab, there is only 1 version, this example is to highlight the
ability to have multiple versions)
Next, let's review the version: 1 CentOS-On-Demand-Network blueprint. (In future

sections, we'll go into more detail with this Code)

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Example Review of Blueprint
1. name: CentOS-On-Demand-Network and version: 1 are sync components

between GitHub and Cloud Assembly
2. inputs: are used for variables in naming the Virtual Machine and NSX-T On-
Demand Network
3. resources: are used to define the components for Cloud_vSphere_Machine
and Cloud_NSX_Network
Summary
This section reviewed sourcing a Cloud Assembly Blueprint from GitHub and what each
component represents. In the other sections, more detail and actual hands on task will
illustrate the steps necessary to integrate vRA 8 and GitHub.

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Synchronize GitHub Sourced blueprint

to Cloud Assembly
In this section, you will synchronize a blueprint from a GitHub repository to vRealize
Automation 8 Cloud Assembly. The intent of this section is to demonstrate the steps in
syncing blueprints sourced and controlled via GitHub to Cloud Assembly. The GitHub
sourced blueprint is the first step in the laying the foundation for provisioning a CentOS
Virtual Machine using NSX-T's On-Demand Network integration with vRealize Automation
8 which we will be covering in a subsequent lesson.
If you are jumping into this module after just starting the lab or if you closed your
browser after taking previous modules, you will need to open the Chrome browser, click
the vRealize Automation bookmark in the bookmark bar and then log in to vRealize
Automation with the cached credentials.
1. (If you have not already done so), Click on Cloud Assembly.
VMware Cloud Assembly orchestrates and expedites infrastructure and application

delivery in line with DevOps principles. We will demonstrate how to sync a blueprint
from GitHub.

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Verify CentOS-On-Demand-Network Blueprint does not

Exist
1. Click on the Blueprints tab to open up the initial Blueprints page.

2. You will note that there are two existing blueprints; however, there is not a
CentOS-On-Demand-Network Blueprint. That is because the sync process has yet
to be configured, which you will do next. At the end of this section, you will sync
a blueprint followed by a couple of deployments that demonstrate deploying
CentOS with on-demand networking.
Note that the two existing blueprints are not stored in an external Git repository. They
were created in vRealize Automation directly and are only stored in vRealize
Automation's database.

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Review Cloud Assembly Projects
As you prepare to integrate GitHub and Cloud Assembly, a key component is the Cloud
Assembly Project that ties together the integration.
1. Click Infrastructure
2. Click Projects

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Review On-Demand-Network Project
A Cloud Assembly Project links users, cloud zones and and blueprints. Amongst other
things, it also allows a project to be associated so as to sync blueprints from external Git
repositories. You will see this Project referenced in later configuration steps.
1. This is a point in reference only as you proceed to the GitHub integration in the
next step. In taking note of this On-Demand-Network Project, you will configure
the synchronization process for GitHub integration with this project.

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Add GitHub Integration with Cloud Assembly
To setup an integration with GitHub navigate to:

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1. Scroll down to Connections (not shown)
1. Click Integrations
2. Click ADD INTEGRATION

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Select GitHub Integration
1. Click GitHub

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Configure new GitHub Integration
1. The Server URL https://api.github.com is default as a reference point with the

integration.
2. The GitHub Personal Access Token is pre-populated in this field for this lab.
3. Click Validate.
4. Type GitHub
5. Optional Description (Type GitHub)
6. Click ADD

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Reopen GitHub Integration
1. Click OPEN

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Add Project to GitHub Integration
1. Click Projects

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Add Project
1. Click ADD PROJECT
Select On-Demand-Network
This step interconnects the Cloud Assembly Project to the GitHub Integration
1. Select On-Demand-Network
2. Click NEXT

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Configure Repository Details
Navigate to Sync Results
1. Click on the arrow to view expanded details and the sync process for the GitHub
integration

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Validate Sync Results

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Validate and Save Sync Configurations
1. Click VALIDATE (this is required to save the changes)

2. Click SAVE

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Navigate to Blueprints
1. Click Blueprints
Review Sync Blueprint and Project

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Review CentOS-On-Demand-Network Blueprint Details
1. This is the CentOS-On-Demand-Network Blueprint which will be used to deploy

a CentOS Virtual Machine with NSX-T On-Demand-Networking
2. This is the canvas which allows drag and drop Resource Types and interconnect
them
3. The infrastructure as Code provides declarative statements that result in a
consistent and repeatable provisioning process. (we will provide more detail on
this code in future sections).
4. Click CLOSE
Summary
In this section, we completed a walk-thru in creating a GitHub Integration within Cloud

Assembly and synced a CentOS-On-Demand-Network blueprint which provides us the
foundation for the next section in provisioning NSX-T On-Demand-Networking for
CentOS.

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Overview of vRealize Automation 8 and

NSX-T On-Demand-Network Integration
Previously, you configured GitHub integration with Cloud Assembly to sync a CentOS-
On-Demand-Network blueprint. In this section, you will review how vRealize Automation
8 and NSX-T integrate for seamless configuration and provisioning of NSX-T On-Demand-
Networking.
Overview on two personas: Administrator and Consumer
1. The first persona (ADMINISTRATOR) highlights the roles and tasks for creating
the underlying infrastructure interconnecting through Infrastructure as Code
(Blueprint).
2. The second persona (CONSUMER) highlights the role in requesting the blueprint;
therein, consuming On-Demand-Networking through Cloud Assembly NETWORK
PROFILES.

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Overview on Cloud Assembly and routed configuration
1. In a Cloud Assembly Blueprint, integrating with NSX-T networking, you have five
options for networkType. In this overview, you see routed highlighted and used
to create on-demand networking declared int the blueprint.
2. This diagram illustrates how with NSX-T on-demand networking, NSX-T creates a
logical switch Tier1 Gateway that connects the provisioned VM.

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Overview on Cloud Assembly Network Policies
1. Network Profiles define a group of networks and network settings that are
available for a cloud account in a particular region or data center in vRealize
2. Network Policies define settings for (in this case routed) network types.
3. Configured example for on-demand network settings (you will review these
details in the next section).

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Overview on NSX-T Routed Network
In the next section, you will deploy two CentOS virtual Machines with on-demand
networking. This diagram outlines the constructs that illustrate on-demand networking.
In future sections, you will review vCenter virtual machines and NSX-T on-demand
constructs that highlights the information below.
1. Deployment of the first CentOS virtual machine hol-centos-50 with on-demand

networking
2. As part of the first deployment, Cloud Assembly (as declared in the blueprint)
calls NSX-T to create a Tier 1 Gateway with a default gateway IP address of
192.168.150.1 on a /28 network segment
3. Deployment of the second CentOS virtual machine hol-centos-52 with on-
demand networking
4. As part of the second deployment, the Cloud Assembly (as declared in the
blueprint) calls NSX-T to create a Tier 1 Gateway with a default gateway with and
IP address of 192.168.150.17 on a /28 network segment
5. Within NSX-T, Downlinks and Uplinks interconnect Tier1 GW hol-od-49 and hol-
od-51. These are represented by the subnets 100.64.64.0/31 and
100.64.64.2/31, respectively and are connected via an existing Tier0 Gateway.
To assist in understanding this process, review the two subnets shown on the next page
below for more detail.

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Review IP Subnet example for NSX-T On-Demand-

Networking
1. Review of the isolated networks (subnetted) 192.168.150.0

2. Review of the isolated networks (subnetted) 100.64.64.0
Summary
In this section, we completed an overview of the Cloud Assembly and NSX-T constructs
that demonstrate On-Demand-Networking. Next, you will configure these constructs
and deploy two CentOS demonstrating On-Demand-Networks followed by a review in
vCenter and NSX-T.

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Review and Deploy in Cloud Assembly

with NSX-T On-Demand Networking
In this section, you will review and deploy two separate CentOS virtual machines each
with their own On-Demand-Networking.
Review the CentOS-On-Demand-Network Blueprint
1. Click CentOS-On-Demand-Network Blueprint.
Review the Blueprint Code
1. Focus on the Code which is highlighted next for details.

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Details on the Blueprint
Note: the screen capture above is enlarged for clarity.
1. Variables are defined with inputs: in naming the virtual machine and NSX-T On-
Demand Network. There are two inputs defined name: and network-name:
2. The name: input configures a customized hostname for the virtual machine. It
is defined as a string with a default value of hol-centos and has a minLength
of 1 and maxLength of 10.
3. The network-name: input configures a customized network name for the On-
Demand-Network created in NSX-T. It is defined as a string with a default value
of hol-od and has a minLength of 1 and maxLength of 10.
4. The resources defines the type of constructs to add for the blueprint code.
5. This lab consists of a resource Cloud.vSphere.Machine with properties of
image: CentOS7, flavor: micro, input variable for name, CentOS
customization spec: CentOS and a network configured assignment: static.
In other words, this blueprint deploys in vSphere, micro sized, CentOS7 template

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which is customized using a vSphere customizationSpec CentOS, named hol-

centos## (**two random digits) connected to a defined Cloud_NSX_Network_1.id
network and configured with a static IP Address.
6. This lab consists of a resource Cloud.NSX.Network with properties networkType:
routed and a variable input name: network-name. In other words, when
deploying this blueprint, the CentOS virtual machine is connected to dynamically
created on-demand routed network named hol-od## (**two random digits).
**You may ask where does the virtual machine name and network-name get the two
digit random number as part of the naming process? See the next page for
details.
Review Custom Naming
This screen capture shows that within the Cloud Assembly Project: On-Demand-
Network, there is a Custom Naming template ${resource.name}-${##} that
interconnects the name: variable and as a result control dynamically the hostname of
the virtual machine and on-demand routed NSX-T network.
This is a for reference only - do not follow these steps as they have already
been done in the Project configuration for you
1. Cloud Assembly infrastructure Tab

2. Project named On-Demand-Network and scrolling down shows the highlighted
configuration for next step below
3. Custom Naming template defines a ${resource.name}-${##} variable that
interconnects back to the blueprint name: inputs; therefore, resulting in a
dynamic hostname and On-Demand Network name.
Next, you will close out the blueprint and review Cloud Assembly Network Profiles and
Network Policies

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Close the Blueprint
After reviewing the blueprint code
1. Click CLOSE

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Review Network Profiles
Before deploying any virtual machines, you will review a key configuration in Cloud
Assembly: Network Profiles for NSX-T On-Demand Networking. A vRealize Automation
Cloud Assembly network profile describes the behavior of the deployed network. Here
you will focus on the use of Network Policies when creating on-demand networks. You
will review a Network Profile / Network Policies for the details with NSX-T On-Demand
Networking
2. Click Network Profiles
3. Click OPEN for the details on Network Profile vsphere-networks

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Review Network Policies
1. Click Network Policies

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Details on Network Policies
In create an on-demand network, you would configure the following (for ease of
convenience, all inputs are populated) - please do not adjust or reconfigure
• Transport zone: a transport zone is an existing NSX-T concept that is similar to

terms like dvSwitch or dvPortGroup. A transport zone controls which hosts an NSX
logical switch can reach. It can span one or more vSphere clusters. Transport
zones control which clusters and which virtual machines can participate in the
use of a particular network.
• CIDR: the network address range to be used during provisioning to create the
isolated subnets. In other words, you will use this CIDR block and subdivide it in
the next configuration.
• Subnet size: size of the on-demand network created for each isolated (ie.
subnetted) network in a deployment that uses this profile
• IP Range Assignment: when no DHCP server is configured on the network,
Static configuration allocates IP address statically.

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• External network: provides a list of networks configured for IP Allocation.

• Tier-0 logical router: provides a gateway to networks that are external to the
NSX deployment. It is used to configure outbound access for on-demand
networks.
• Edge Cluster: provides routing services.
Details on IP Address Schema
1. In the on-demand network, you see the referenced CIDR block of 192.168.150/
24, which is then isolated ( or subnetted) with a /28. This equates to 4 subnets
with 14 hosts per isolated network (or subnet).
2. As you provision a CentOS virtual machine, the on-demand network starts using
the subnet addr 192.168.150.0 with a IP range of 192.168.150.1 to
192.168.150.14. The second CentOS virtual machine provisioned will use
subnet addr 192.168.150.16 with an IP range of 192.168.150.17 to
192.168.150.30.
Why is this important? Because as you provision the two CentOS virtual machines -
the first virtual machine will be assigned an IP address of 192.168.150.2 and the
second virtual machine will be assigned an IP address of 192.168.150.17. With the
on-demand networking, you will see NSX-T assign the first on-demand network default
gateway (Tier 1) IP address 192.168.150.1 and the second on-demand network default
gateway (Tier1) IP address of 192.168.150.17.
After reviewing the on-demand network policies
1. Scroll down and click CANCEL (not shown)

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Select and Deploy The First Blueprint
1. Click Blueprints
2. Select the box for CentOS-On-Demand-Network
3. Click DEPLOY
Configure the Deployment Details
1. Type On Demand Network 01 CentOS

2. Drop down selecting Current Draft
3. Optional Add Description On Demand Network 01 CentOS

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4. Click NEXT
Deployment Inputs
For convenience, Hostname and network-name are pre-populated, Optional - if you

prefer to change the inputs, feel free to within the 1 to 10 character limit.
1. Hostname: hol-centos
2. network-name: hol-od
3. Click DEPLOY

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Deployment Information
This view provides Topology, History and Monitoring on the deployment. In this lab, you
will proceed and deploy a second CentOS virtual machine while the first machine is
being provisioned.
1. Click CLOSE
Select Blueprints
You will see the provisioning process of the first CentOS deployment; however, you will
repeat the process for a second CentOS deploy.
1. Click Blueprints

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Select and Deploy 2nd Blueprint
1. Select the box for CentOS-On-Demand-Network

2. Click DEPLOY
Configure the Deployment Details
1. Type On Demand Network 02 CentOS

2. Drop down selecting Current Draft
3. Optional Add Description On Demand Network 02 CentOS
4. Click NEXT

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Deployment Inputs
For convenience, Hostname and network-name are pre-populated, Optional - if you

prefer to change the inputs, feel free to within the 1 to 10 character limit.
1. Hostname: hol-centos
2. network-name: hol-od
3. Click DEPLOY
4. Click CLOSE (Not Shown)
Validate both Deployments
Be patient while the two virtual machines are deployed. The end result of the two
provided CentOS virtual machines with On-Demand Networking consists of the
following:
1. The first deployment On Demand Network 01 CentOS deployed a CentOS

virtual machine named hol-centos-xx with an IP address of 192.168.150.2 on

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the on-demand network of hol-od-yy. (assumption is deployment used the

default pre-populated hostname and network-name and hostnames and
network-names will differ from screen)
2. The second deployment On Demand Network 02 CentOS deployed a CentOS
virtual machine named hol-centos-54 with an IP address of 192.168.150.xx on
the on-demand network of hol-od-yy. (assumption is deployment used the
default pre-populated hostname and network-name and hostnames and
network-names will differ from screen)
Summary
In this section, you reviewed Cloud Assembly Network Profiles / Network Policies that
define NSX-T On-Demand Networking. Next, you deployed two separate CentOS virtual
machines with On-Demand Networking. In the next section, we'll validate the two
separate CentOS virtual machines each within their respective networks that route
traffic to each other.

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Validate and Test CentOS Deployments

with NSX-T On-Demand Networking
In this section, you will validate and test two separate CentOS virtual machines each
within their own On-Demand-Networking.
Review CentOS Deployments
1. Note, your deployments hostname might look different, ie in this guide two
virtual machines have hostnames hol-centos-xx and hol-centos-yy.
2. Click + to open a new Chrome Tab
vSphere Client
1. Click vSphere Client

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Login to vCenter
1. Check the box Use Windows session Authentication

2. Click Login

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Select vCenter Logical Switch
This logical network is the result of the on-demand network integration with NSX-T.
(note, your virtual machine hostname and network-name will appear different)
1. Navigate to vSphere Networking

2. Here you will see some NSX-T network segments. Most of these segments were
pre-defined for this lab but the "hol-od-xx" segments are the two that were just
created by our blueprint. Click on on of the hol-od-xx segments.
3. Click VMs
4. You see virtual machine hol-centos-yy is connected to network segment hol-od-
xx.
5. Optional (not shown) you see the other CentOS virtual machine connected to
the other network segment that was created by the deployment.

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Navigate to Hosts & Clusters
Next we will take a look at the deployed virtual machines.
1. Click Hosts and Clusters

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Select Virtual Machine, Launch Web Console
1. Click on one of the hol-centos-xx virtual machines

2. You will see the DNS Name: hol-centos-xx and IP Address: 192.168.150.2
3. Click Launch Web Console (not shown click OK to Launch Console)
4. REPEAT steps 1 - 3, (Not Shown) Click on the other hol-centos-zz and Click
Launch Web Console.
Review VMs from Web Console
You will see two web consoles for the two deployed virtual machines. You will review and
validate routed network traffic between these two virtual machines.

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1. Click into the console for the first machine (the one with the lowest suffix
number)
Details on Virtual Machine
For clarity, this is an enlarged screen capture, steps are shown below
1. login: root
2. Password: VMware1!
3. Type ip a (press return) this out shows the assigned static IP address of the
virtual machine from Cloud Assembly.
4. Note the IP address of this machine is 192.168.150.2
5. Type ping 192.168.150.18 -c 4 (press return) this output shows a successful routed
network ping request to 192.168.150.18.

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6. Type tracepath 192.168.150.18 (press return) this output shows a route path from
192.168.150.2 to 192.168.150.18.
Next, you will explore the tracepath results in more detail
Details on tracepath
The output on the tracepath sourced from 192.168.150.2 to 192.168.150.18 is

important because it reveals what is happening behind the scenes with NSX-T.
1. The Cloud Assembly integration with NSX-T On-Demand Networking provisions a

Tier1 Gateway with an IP of 192.168.150.1
2. Within NSX-T, there are Downlinks and Uplinks that are created interconnecting
Tier1 and Tier0 Logical Routers (You will explore this in NSX-T in a few steps)
3. The tracepath completes with a response from the destination IP Address of
192.168.150.18.
New Tab and Open NSX Manager
1. Click + to open a New Tab in the Chrome Browser

2. Click >> to expand the dropdown options for extended bookmarks
3. Click NSX Manager

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Login NSX Manager
**If presented with "Your connection is not private" Click Advanced and Click
Proceed to nsx-mgr.local (unsafe)
1. Type admin
2. Type VMware1!VMware1!
3. Click LOG IN

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Review Advanced Networking & Security
1. Click Advanced Networking & Security
Review NSX-T Switching
1. In NSX-T, you see there are two Logical Switches created as part of on-demand
networking. these are hol-od-xx and hol-od-yy.

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Review NSX-T Routers
1. Click Routers
2. Logical Routers (Tier-1) hol-od-xx and hol-od-yy as part of on-demand
networking.
Select Logical Router and Ports
1. Click the name of the first logical router

2. Click Configuration and choose the drop down option Router Ports
Review Logical Router Configuration
1. You will see the Logical Router, Type, IP Address/mask and Connected To
details.

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2. Expand each column to view the information (not shown)
Review next Logical Router Configuration
1. Click the name of the second logical router

2. You will see the Logical Router, Type, IP Address/mask and Connected To
for details. Expand each column to view the information (not shown)
3. Click X to close out the web console for hol-centos-xx
4. Click X to close out the web console for hol-centos-yy
Navigate back to Cloud Assembly CentOS Deployments
1. Click in the Chrome browser tabs Cloud Assembly (if you are logged out, click
Cloud Assembly to log back in).
2. Review the two deployments information before proceeding to the next step.

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Destroy Deployments
1. Select ACTIONS
2. Select Delete
1. Click SUBMIT
2. REPEAT the same steps for On Demand Network 01 CentOS
Submit Delete to Destroy Deployment
Confirm Deployment Destory

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1. You might need to click the refresh option to see both deployments as
destroyed
Review vCenter for destroyed Virtual Machines
Return to the vSphere Client browser tab
1. Click vSphere - Compute Cluster A (if you are logged out of vSphere,
Check the box Use Windows session Authentication)
2. You will see the virtual machines no longer exist in the cluster
3. Click Networking

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Review Destroyed Logical Switches
1. Note that the logical switches no longer exist in vSphere

2. Click on NSX browser tab.
Review Destroyed Logical Routers
1. Refresh the browser

2. You will see the Logical Routers are destroyed
3. Click Switching

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Reviewed The Logical Switches
1. You will see Logical Switches that were created no longer exit
2. Click X to close out the NSX Browser Tab
Summary
In this section, you deployed two virtual machines with on-demand networking. Next,
you reviewed and validated network connectivity between the separate on-demand
networks. Last, you destroyed the deployments in Cloud Assembly and validated the
virtual machines, Logical Switches and Logical Routers were destroyed.

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Infoblox Overview
Introduction

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Configure IPAM Infoblox Plugin

Launch vRealize Automation 8 (if needed)
1. (if needed) Launch chrome browser and click on the vRealize Automation
bookmark
Logging into vRA 8
Clicking on Cloud Assembly
Adding Integration
Add IPAM integration
Import Provider Package
Import Provider
Upload Infoblox Plugin
Confirming IMPORT PROVIDER PACKAGE
Validate Infoblox Plugin

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New Integration
Validate
Untrusted Certificate

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Completing the configuration
1. Notice the Credentials validated successfully

2. Type Infoblox in the Name field
3. Click ADD, this will take a few minutes to complete

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Back to the Integrations
1. You will see an infoblox integration added to Cloud Assembly Integrations.

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Review Infoblox Prerequisites and

Configure Cloud Assembly Network
Profile
Validating Integrations
2. Click Integrations
3. Validate that Github and infoblox integrations exist. You created these
integrations in previous steps in this module.

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Validate Blueprints
1. Click on Blueprints
2. Validate that you have a CentOS-infoblox Blueprint. You can see the GitHub
icon is listed as the Source Control. This is because it is being synchronized by
the GitHub integration.
Infoblox

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Logging in to Infoblox
1. Use the account and password provided and click Login

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Infoblox DNS
The intent on validating corp.local is vRA 8 and Infoblox integration creates an A DNS
Resource Record in the forward and reverse DNS lookup zone. This is a prerequisite for
the integration between vRA 8 and Infoblox.
1. Click on Data Management tab

2. Click on the DNS tab
3. Verify corp.local is shown

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Infoblox Extensible Attributes
Another prerequisite for the vRA 8 and Infoblox integration is configuration of Extensible
Attributes.
1. Click on the Administration tab

2. Click on the Extensible Attributes tab
3. In the Go to type VMware (Note: the search is case sensitive)
4. Click Go
5. The items listed for VMware are used to pass data for the request.

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Infoblox IPAM
1. Click the Data Management tab

2. Click the IPAM tab
3. Click 192.168.130.0/24 as this represents the network assigned to the Infoblox
IPAM integration.
Details on IPAM
This illustrates the different configuration options within Infoblox for static IP Assignment
with vRA 8.

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1. This is a Reserved Range and will not be used as part of the static IP
Assignment integration with vRA 8 and Infoblox. This ensures 192.168.130.1 -
192.168.130.10 IPs are not assigned to a provisioned VM.
2. This is a DHCP Range and will not be used as part of the static IP Assignment
integration with vRA 8 and Infoblox. This ensures 192.168.130.200 -
192.168.130.219 IPs are not assigned to a provisioned VM.
3. The Unused IPs are used for static IP Assignment integration with vRA 8 and
Infoblox. This ensures 192.168.130.11 - 199 and 192.168.130.220 -
192.168.130.254 are available for static IP Assignment.
Return back to VMware Cloud Services (or Cloud

Assembly)
1. Click VMware Cloud Services (or Cloud Assembly)

2. (Not Shown) you may be logged out of Cloud Assembly, GO TO LOGIN PAGE to
authenticate to Cloud Assembly, Click Sign in and select Cloud Assembly.

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Navigate to Network Profiles
2. Click Network Profiles

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Open Network Profiles
1. Click OPEN for vsphere-networks

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Configure Network Profile
1. Click X to remove the Capability Tag env:infoblox

2. Click Networks

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Configure Networks
1. Select the check box for IPAM-RegionA01-vDS-COMP

2. Click MANAGE IP RANGES
Configure Manage IP Ranges
1. Select ADD IPAM RANGE

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Add IPAM IP Range
1. Click Search for IPAM integrations

2. Select Infoblox
Select Address Space
1. Click Select address space

2. Select default

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Select Infoblox Subnet
1. Click Box for 192.168.130.0/24

2. Scroll down
Add the Infoblox Subnet
1. Click ADD

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Validate added IPAM IP RANGE
1. Validate 192.168.130.0/24 is shown as the added IPAM IP Range

2. Click X to exit this screen
Save Changes to Network Profile
1. Click SAVE

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Deploy Infoblox CentOS VM

In this section, you will deploy a CentOS Virtual Machine that is assigned a static IP
address sourced from Infoblox
Navigate to Blueprints
1. Verify tag env:infoblox is not present from vsphere-networks. In the previous

section, it was removed and this is to confirm its removal.
2. Click Blueprints

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Select CentOS-infoblox
1. Click the check box for CentOS-Infoblox

2. Click DEPLOY
Deployment Type
1. Type Infoblox-deploy-01
2. Select dropdown for Current Draft
3. Click NEXT

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Deployment Inputs
1. Use the pre-populated Hostname

2. Click DEPLOY (Not Shown)
Close Create - In Progress
1. Click CLOSE (Not Shown)
Navigate to vCenter

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1. Click vSphere - HOL Datacenter
(If needed) vSphere Client Authentication
1. Click box for Use Windows session authentication

2. Click Login

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Validate vCenter VM
1. Select Host and Clusters

2. Select the newly created VM hol-lb-xx (number will be unique to the
deployment)
3. Validate the IP Address (note note of the IP address as it is referenced in next
steps)
Navigate back to Cloud Assembly
1. Click Cloud Assembly
Validate Cloud Assembly Deployment

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1. Validate the IP Address is the same from vCenter
Validate Infoblox
This demonstrates that Infoblox allocated an IP Address 192.168.130.11.
1. Click Infoblox Grid Manager in Browser Tab

2. Click the Refresh icon
3. Click the Assigned IP address (DNS Object)
4. Click DNS

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Validate Infoblox DNS
1. Click corp.local
Validate Infoblox IP

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1. Provisioned Virtual Machine hol-lb-xx is added as a Host Resource Record in

forward lookup zone corp.local
Navigate back to Cloud Assembly
Validate Cloud Assembly Deployment
1. Review deployed Virtual Machine hol-lb-64 (the vm number may be different) for
IP address and that it matches what Infoblox displays. In this example,
192.168.130.11 matches Infoblox.

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Review Extensibility
Reviewing Extensibility shows the executed ABX actions and log output.
1. Click Extensibility
2. Click Action Runs

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Review Action Runs
1. Select USER RUNS

2. Select integration runs
Review Infoblox_AllocateIP
The Infoblox_AllocateIP is the python ABX action that requests and assigns the IP to the
provisioned Virtual Machine.
1. Click Infoblox_AllocateIP

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Details Infoblox_AllocateIP
1. Select Log
Detail Log Output
1. Review the Log Output for the IP allocation

2. Scroll down for details

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Navigate to Deployments
This process destroys the deployed Virtual Machine
1. Select Deployments
2. Select ACTIONS
3. Select Delete
4. Click SUBMIT (Not Shown)
Review Destroy Process
Navigate to Infoblox
1. Click Infoblox Grid Manager

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Validate removal of Host Resource Record
1. Review the previous Host Resource Record has been removed now
2. Click the refresh button to refresh the screen.

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Confim Destroy Process in Cloud Assembly

2. Click Refresh icon (if needed)
3. Confirm No Deployments Found
Return to vCenter

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1. Click vSphere - hol-lb....
1. Review vSphere has removed Virtual Machine.

2. (Not Shown) - review Recent Tasks for details on the delete process

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Conclusion
In this module, you had the opportunity to review and configure a GitHub Integration for
synced blueprints. In addition, you configured vRealize Automation 8, NSX-T for On-
Demand Networking and Infoblox integration.
Congratulations on completing Module 3

• Module 2 - Building Blueprints with Cloud Assembly (45 minutes)
• Module 6 - Integrating Development Tools into Code Stream Pipelines (30
minutes)
How to End Lab
You may proceed to another module but if you are done with this lab:
1. Click on the END button at the top of your lab console

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Module 4 - vRealize
Automation Extensibility
Basics (45 minutes)

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Introduction to Extensibility
This module will focus on the extensibility features available in vRealize Automation. We
will explore concepts such as action-based extensibility (ABX) actions, event
subscriptions, and vRealize Orchestrator integration.
It is not necessary to complete any of the previous modules prior to performing the
exercises in this module.
Lab Captain: Trisha Navarro
What is Extensibility?
Extensibility in vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly allows us to extend application life

cycles to perform event-driven custom automation or integrations. For example, we can
use it to integrate with CMDB, ITSM, or IP Address Management (IPAM) applications.

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Event Broker Service, Subscriptions, and Event Topics
The Event Broker Service (EBS) monitors the vRealize Automation Message Queue for
events, each of which can drive extensibility actions.
These drivers, or subscriptions, are each defined to monitor for a specific event topic.
When the event occurs, the subscription is triggered, initiating either an action-based
extensibility (ABX) action or a vRealize Orchestrator workflow to run. The diagram above
shows two of the most commonly used event topics in vRealize Automation Cloud
Assembly subscriptions: The Compute Provision (Pre) and Compute Provision Post event
topics, which respectively occur prior to and after each cloud resource is provisioned. All
topics can be used to add or update custom properties or tags of the resource.
For a comprehensive list of event topics, see Event topics provided with vRealize
Subscriptions can be specified as blocking events, which would allow an external system
to take action before the vRealize Automation request or event can continue.
Subscriptions can also be defined as being project-specific, meaning they are linked to
blueprint and deployments through the specified project.
We can view system events in the extensibility event log, workflow runs in the workflow
runs window, and action runs in the action run window, all within Cloud Assembly.

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Extensibility Options
Extensibility is performed by using either action-based extensibility (ABX) actions or

vRealize Orchestrator workflows with extensibility subscriptions.
Extensibility Actions
A new capability introduced in vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly, action-based

extensibility (ABX) actions are small, lightweight scripts of code used to specify an
action and how that action is to perform. We can assign an extensibility action to a
subscription to extend the application life cycle.
vRealize Orchestrator Workflows
By integrating Cloud Assembly with your existing vRealize Orchestrator environment, we

can use workflows in your extensibility subscriptions to extend the application lifecycle.
Learn More
To learn more, outside of this Hands On Lab visit How to extend and automate
application life cycles with extensibility.

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Creating an Action-based Extensibility

(ABX) Action
Action-based extensibility (ABX) uses streamlined scripts of code within vRealize
Automation Cloud Assembly to automate extensibility actions.
We can create these extensibility action scripts within Cloud Assembly and assign them
to subscriptions. Similar to vRealize Orchestrator workflows, an extensibility action script
is triggered when an event occurs that has been defined in an extensibility subscription.
Extensibility action scripts are used for more lightweight and simple automation of tasks
and steps than you would perform in Orchestrator workflows.
Action-based extensibility provides:
• An alternative to vRealize Orchestrator workflows, using small and reusable

scriptable actions, for lightweight integrations and customizations
• A way to reuse action templates, which contain reusable parameterized actions
For information, see ABX: Serverless Extensibility of Cloud Assembly Services.
Navigate to vRealize Automation
Let's create a simple ABX action using a template.
Navigate to vRealize Automation to begin creating an ABX action:
1. Double-click the Google Chrome shortcut on the desktop if not already open
(not shown)
2. Click the vRealize Automation bookmark

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vRealize Automation Login
1. Enter the following credentials (this might be auto-populated):

◦ Username: holadmin
◦ Password: VMware1!
2. Click Sign in

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1. Under the Services tab, click Cloud Assembly
Create a New Action
1. Navigate to Extensibility
2. Under Library, click Actions
3. Click + NEW ACTION

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Set Action Settings
1. Enter a name for the new action: Add VM Tags

2. For project, select HOL Project
3. Click NEXT
Load an Action Script Template
1. Click LOAD TEMPLATE

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Select the VM Tag Template
1. In the prompt, select the Tag VM template

2. Click LOAD
Set the Action Script
1. Review the loaded script

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Set the Action Inputs
1. In the right-hand panel, under Inputs, replace the newTags input value with the
following:
{"function":"app","environment":"dev"}
2. Set FaaS provider to On Prem
Test the ABX Action
Let's test our new action to see how its output will look
1. On the bottom-left corner, click the TEST button

2. In the Unsaved Changes prompt, click SAVE AND TEST (not shown)
It might take a couple minutes for the test to complete.

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Open the Test Results
1. Once the test has completed, click See details
Review the Test Results
1. Review the "tags" in the Outputs section

2. When finished, click CLOSE

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Complete your Work
1. Click CLOSE to exit
Summary
You just created an ABX action. If this is your first, congratulations!
For information, see Learn more about extensibility actions.

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Creating a Compute Provisioning

Subscription
We can assign an extensibility action to a Cloud Assembly subscription to extend our
application life cycle.
Let's look at creating a compute provisioning subscription, which invokes the action-
based extensibility (ABX) action we just created in the previous exercise.
Create a New Subscription
1. Navigate to the Extensibility tab

2. Click Subscriptions
3. Click + NEW SUBSCRIPTION
Set Subscription Settings
1. For the name, type: Add VM tags

2. For the event topic, click + ADD

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Set Subscription Event Topic
We want the action to run prior to the cloud resource being provisioned, so the compute
provision event topic is the appropriate choice:
1. Select the Compute provision event topic

2. Click SELECT
Set Runnable Item
1. For Runnable item, click + ADD

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Set Subscription Action
1. Select the Add VM Tags ABX action

2. Click SELECT
Set Other Subscription Settings
If an event topic is blockable, marking a subscription as blocking will block any other
subscriptions from being triggered for this same event topic and condition, until this
action has finished running.

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Let's set this as a blocking subscription:
1. Set blocking as enabled

2. Set timeout to 5 min
3. Set priority to 1
4. Leave the subscription scope with Any project enabled
5. To save and close this new subscription, click CREATE
Tip: If we wanted to limit the scope of our subscription to 1 or more projects, we would
disable Any project and specify the project(s) here.
Create a Blueprint
Now let's create our simple blueprint:
1. Navigate to Blueprints
2. Click + NEW

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Set Initial Blueprint Settings
1. Enter a name like module 4

2. For the project, select the HOL Project
3. Leave the rest of the default field values as-is, then click CREATE

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Design the vSphere Blueprint
1. Drag a vSphere Machine onto the blueprint design canvas
Set the Blueprint's Machine Resource Image
1. In the Code section of the right-hand pane, set the machine resource's image
property to 'CentOS7'

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Deploy from the Blueprint
1. Click DEPLOY to begin deploying a machine with the new blueprint
Deploy a vSphere Machine
1. Enter a deployment name mod4

2. For the blueprint version, select Current Draft
3. Click DEPLOY to provision a machine
Monitor the Deployment Progress
We are automatically redirected to the deployment details page.
1. Here, we can monitor the progress of our deployment

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There is no need to wait for the deployment to complete, since the build may take a few
minutes.
View the Event Log
Let's check the extensibility event log for our compute provision event:

2. Click Events
3. Scroll to find the most recent Compute provision event
4. If the event is not yet present, click the refresh arrow every 30 seconds or so
5. Click on the event ID to drill into the event details
View the Event Details
1. Under Notified Subscriptions at the bottom of the page, find and click the Add
VM Tags action subscription run
2. If the Add VM Tags subscription run is not yet present, click REFRESH every 30
seconds or so until it appears

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View the Action Subscription Run
Review the action subscription run details:
1. Confirm that the action subscription run shows a status of Completed, or wait a
few minutes until it does (the screen should refresh automatically)
2. In the Details tab, scroll and find the Outputs JSON value, showing the function
and environment tags
If there was an issue with our action subscription run, we would be able to obtain some
troubleshooting information given the information on this screen.

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View the Deployment Machine Tags
Navigate back to the deployment details screen and view the tags:
1. Navigate to the Deployments tab to return to the mod4 deployment details

2. In the deployment topology canvas on the left-hand pane, select the machine
resource Cloud_vSphere_Machine... (note that due to the rendering issues
sometimes present in the Hands On Lab environment, you might need to refresh
the canvas using the refresh button as shown in callout #4 on the screen shot in
order to get the cloud machine to display on the canvas)
3. In the machine resource details on the right-hand pane, find the
environment:dev and function:app tags
4. If the tags do not yet appear, click the refresh arrow every 30 seconds or so
5. Take note of the Resource name for the next step

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View the Tags in vSphere
As a final confirmation of your work, let's view the tags in vSphere.
1. Open a new tab in the Google Chrome browser

2. Click the vSphere Client bookmark
3. Check the Use Windows session authentication checkbox
4. Click Login

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View the vSphere Machine Tags
1. Navigate and fully expanded Hosts and Clusters menu if not done
automatically
2. Find and click the machine resource we just deployed
3. In the machine summary in the right-hand pane, scroll down to find the Tags
section
4. Confirm that the machine has been tagged with environment:dev and
function:app here as well

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Lab Housekeeping
Before you continue further with this lab, please destroy any virtual machines that were
provisioned.
1. Return to the Cloud Assembly tab

2. In the mod4 deployment, click the actions ACTIONS menu (Note: if the
deployment has not yet completed, you can continue with the lab and come back
later to delete the deployment once it has completed)
3. Select the Delete action
4. When prompted that the delete action cannot be undone, click SUBMIT (not
shown)
There is no need to wait for the deletion request to complete.
Summary
We have just demonstrated how to create a compute provision subscription using an

action-based extensibility (ABX) action.
For more information, see Extensibility action subscriptions.

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Creating a Compute Provisioning Post

Subscription
As we saw in the previous lesson, we can assign an extensibility action to a Cloud
Assembly subscription to extend our application life cycle.
This time we'll look at creating a compute provisioning post subscription that invokes a
vRealize Orchestrator workflow after the cloud resource has been deployed.
If you would like an introduction to vRealize Orchestrator, visit HOL-2021-04-CMP -

vRealize Orchestrator - Getting Started.
Pull Files from GitHub
Some files that will be used in the following exercise are stored in an online repository.
These files must be copied over to the local repository on the Main Console server.
**If you have not already updated the local repository since you started this
lab, proceed to the next page. If you have already updated the files, click here to skip
ahead.

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Open GitHub Desktop
Open the GitHub Desktop application:
desktop, or click the GitHub Desktop icon in the taskbar of your lab
environment desktop

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Check the online repository for updates:
Synchronize the repository on the local machine with the online repository if necessary:
1. If an option appears to pull commits from the origin remote, click Pull origin
Note: This option is not always available. If that's the case, simply proceed to the next
step.

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Now the files have been synchronized to the local repository. We can now:
Code editor; or

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Our files will still be accessible in the Lab Files folder on the desktop of the Main Console
computer or from Microsoft Visual Studio Code.

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Launch vRealize Orchestrator Web Client
Before we begin creating a compute provisioning post subscription, let's look at the
workflow we will be leveraging.
Launch to the vRealize Orchestrator web client:
1. Return to the vRealize Automation tab in Google Chrome (not shown)

2. If you need to log back into vRealize Automation, enter the following credentials
(not shown):
3. Click the VMware Cloud Services menu in the top-right corner

4. Click Orchestrator to launch vRealize Orchestrator

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Explore a vRealize Orchestrator Workflow
One of your integration engineers has built a workflow that will allow users to change
the root password of the machine they request through vRealize Automation.
To view the workflow's details:
1. Under Library, click Workflows

2. Find the Change root password workflow and click OPEN

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Review the Workflow
1. Click the Schema tab to see the workflow elements. Feel free to look at other
parts of the workflow but don't change anything
2. Once you've reviewed the workflow, click CLOSE

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Navigate to Cloud Assembly:
1. Click the Cloud Services menu in the top-right corner

Create a New Subscription

2. Click Subscriptions
3. Click + NEW SUBSCRIPTION
Set Subscription Settings
1. For the name, type Change root password

2. For the event topic, click + ADD

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Set Subscription Event Topic
We want the action to run after the cloud resource is provisioned, so the compute post
provision event topic is the appropriate choice:
1. Select the Compute post provision event topic

2. Click SELECT
Set Condition
Let's add a condition so that this subscription will only run when the request contains a
custom property "newPassword":
1. For Condition, enable Filter events in topic

2. Type (or click and drag to select from here and drag over to the form) the
following condition: event.data.customProperties.newPassword != null
We will look at a blueprint later to see how this condition is triggered.

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Set Runnable Item
1. For Runnable item, click + ADD
Set Subscription Action
1. For Runnable type, clikck to expand the list and select VRO WORKFLOW
2. Search for change root
3. Select the Change root password workflow (remember, this is the name of the
workflow that we just looked at in Orchestrator)
4. Click SELECT

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Set Other Subscription Settings
As mentioned in the previous exercise, if an event topic is blockable, marking a

subscription as blocking will block any other subscriptions for this same event topic and
condition, until this action has finished running.
Let's set this as a blocking subscription:
1. Set blocking as enabled

2. Set timeout to 5 min
3. Set priority to 1
4. Leave the subscription scope with Any project enabled
5. To save and close this new subscription, click CREATE
If we wanted to limit the scope of our subscription to 1 or more projects, we would

disable Any project and specify the project(s) here.

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Upload a Blueprint
There is a blueprint in the Lab Files directory that we will import for this part of the
lesson.
2. Click UPLOAD

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Get the Blueprint
Let's upload the file.
1. For the Name, type M4 Basic VM

2. Click and select the HOL Project
3. Click No file chosen to choose the blueprint YAML file to import

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Select the File
1. In the Desktop --> Lab Files directory

2. Click 2073-02-M4-basic-vsphere-machine.yaml
3. Click Open

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Upload The File
1. Click UPLOAD
Open the Blueprint
Let's open up the blueprint and take a look at it.

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1. Click the name/link M4 Basic VM that we just imported
View the Blueprint Code
1. Note the last line of the blueprint includes a custom property called
newPassword
This property is the trigger that will ultimately cause our Orchestrator workflow to run. If
you remember when we created the post provision subscription, we set the condition:
event.data.customProperties.newPassword != null
This blueprint contains a value for that custom property (it will prompt the user via the
$(input.rootPassword) code and will place the resulting value in the newPassword
custom property. Therefore, that property will not be null and the subscription will
trigger to call the Orchestrator workflow at the end of the provisioning process for this
blueprint.
Deploy from the Blueprint
1. Click DEPLOY to begin deploying a machine with the updated blueprint

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Deploy a vSphere Machine
1. Enter a deployment name mod42

2. For the blueprint version, select the Current Draft
3. Click NEXT

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Because of that last line in the blueprint, you are prompted to input a value that will be
stored in the variable that will be passed to the Orchestrator workflow after the machine
has been provisioned
1. For the root password, type VMware123

2. Click DEPLOY to begin deploying a machine with the updated blueprint
Note that the root password for the VM template (image) that this blueprint deploys is
VMware1!. The post provision subscription that we created will change the root
password on the machine after it deploys to whatever we enter in this form.
Monitor the Deployment Progress
We are automatically redirected to the deployment details screen.

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2. Copy (CTRL+C) the deployment ID given at the end of the deployment URL
(everything after deployment%2F)
minutes.
View the Event Log
Let's check the extensibility event log for our compute post provision event:

2. Click Events
3. In the Filter... field, select Correlation ID, paste (CTRL+V) the deployment ID
obtained from the previous step, then hit the ENTER key
4. Find the Compute post provision event
◦ Note: The Compute post provision event will occur several minutes after
the Compute provision event
5. If the event is not yet present, click the refresh arrow every 30 seconds or so
6. Once the Compute post provision event appears, click on its event ID to see
the event details
It may be a few minutes before the compute post provision event appears, because it
occurs after the machine resource is provisioned.

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View the Event Details
1. Review the event details, and notice the deployment ID is shown as part of the
Correlation ID
2. Under Notified Subscriptions at the bottom of the page, find and click the
Change root password workflow subscription run
3. If the Change root password subscription run is not yet present, click
REFRESH every 30 seconds or so until it appears

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View the Workflow Subscription Run
1. Confirm that the workflow subscription run shows a status of Completed, or wait
a few minutes until it does (the screen should refresh automatically)
2. In the Details tab, observe that the inputted password is given under Inputs >
inputProperties > customProperties > newPassword
3. In the right-hand pane, any available logs for the Orchestrator workflow run
would appear here
4. For the next step, take note of the machine resource name under Inputs >
inputProperties > resourceNames
If there was an issue with our workflow subscription run, we would be able to obtain
some troubleshooting information given the information on this screen.

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Test the New Password in vSphere
As a final confirmation of your work, let's test out the password via the vSphere Web
Console.

3. If prompted to open vmware-cip-launcher.exe, click Open vmware-cip-
launcher.exe (not shown)
5. Click Login

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Launch the vSphere Web Console
Launch the Web Console for the machine:
1. Navigate and fully expand the Hosts and Clusters menu if not done
automatically
2. Find and select the machine resource we just deployed
3. In the machine summary in the right-hand pane, click Launch Web Console
4. In the Launch Console dialog box, select Web Console and click OK (not
shown)
This will launch a console to log into the machine in a new tab.
Attempt to Login
Attempt to log into the machine using the new password:
1. Login with the following:

◦ Username: root
◦ Password: VMware123
Validate Login
1. If login was successful, you should be logged in as root

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Lab Housekeeping
provisioned.
1. Return to the Cloud Assembly tab

2. Click the Deployments tab
3. In the mod42 deployment, click the actions ACTIONS menu
5. When prompted that the delete action cannot be undone, click SUBMIT (not
shown)
There is no need to wait for the deletion request to complete.
Summary
We have just demonstrated how to create a compute post provision subscription using a
vRealize Orchestrator workflow.
For more information, see Extensibility workflow subscriptions.

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Conclusion
In this module, you learned about how vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly
extensibility allows us to extend application life cycles. You were able to create action-
based extensibility (ABX) actions, and add subscriptions to invoke extensibility actions
and vRealize Orchestrator workflows to perform custom automation and integration.
Well done on completing the module!
module of your choice:
• Module 1 - Foundation - Getting Started with vRealize Automation Cloud Lab

• Module 2 - Building Public Cloud blueprints with Cloud Assembly
• Module 3 - Out-of-the-Box Integrations
• Module 5 - Curating Content with Service Broker
• Module 6 - Integrating Development Tools into Codestream pipeline
How to End Lab

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Module 5 - Managing
Content in Service Broker
(45 minutes)

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Introduction to Service Broker

The vRealize Automation Service Broker provides a single interface where catalog items
can be requested and managed.
This module contains the following lessons:
• Introduction to Service Broker

• Accessing Service Broker
• Adding Content to Service Broker
• Working with Custom Forms
Lab Captain: Trisha Navarro
vRealize Automation Service Broker
As a cloud administrator, you create catalog items in Service Broker by importing

released vRealize Automation Cloud Assembly blueprints, Amazon Web Services
CloudFormation templates, vRealize Orchestrator workflows, and other services that
your users can deploy to your cloud vendor regions or datastores. These content
sources can be restricted to a single project, or shared across multiple projects. Service
Broker also provides the cloud administrator with the ability to configure custom forms
for each catalog item, in order to enhance the end user experience.

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As a user, you can request and monitor the provisioning process in Service Broker.
Here, you can also manage the deployed catalog items and perform day-2 operations
throughout the deployment lifecycle.
In this module, we will demonstrate how to import Cloud Assembly blueprints and
CloudFormation templates, assign them to projects, attach governance policies in
accordance with business requirements, and configure custom forms.
Learn More
To learn more, visit What is vRealize Automation Service Broker.

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Accessing Service Broker

To access vRealize Automation Service Broker, we need to access the landing page for
vRealize Automation Cloud Services Console.
Navigate to vRealize Automation:
1. Double-click the Google Chrome shortcut on the desktop if not already open
(not shown)
2. Click the vRealize Automation bookmark

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vRealize Automation Login
1. Enter the following credentials (this might be auto-populated):

2. Click Sign in

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Navigate to Service Broker
In the Cloud Services Console, we see the services to which we are entitled in this
organization.
1. Under the Services tab, click Service Broker
Ready to Go
With that, we are logged into Service Broker and ready to start configuring our
environment.

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Already Done

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window.

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Adding Content to Service Broker

As discussed in the previous section, Service Broker aggregates and presents different
content types in a single Service Catalog.
In this section, we will take a look at how we would add content sources from
CloudFormation templates, Cloud Assembly blueprints, and vRealize Orchestrator
workflows.
Pull Files from GitHub
Some files that will be used in the following exercise are stored in an online repository.
These files must be copied over to the local repository on the Main Console server.
**If you have not already updated the local repository since you started this
lab, proceed to the next page. If you have already updated the files, click here to skip
ahead.

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Open GitHub Desktop
Open the GitHub Desktop application:
desktop, or click the GitHub Desktop icon in the taskbar of your lab
environment desktop

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Check the online repository for updates:
Synchronize the repository on the local machine with the online repository if necessary:
1. If an option appears to pull commits from the origin remote, click Pull origin
Note: This option is not always available. If that's the case, simply proceed to the next
step.

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Now the files have been synchronized to the local repository. We can now:
Code editor; or

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Our files will still be accessible in the Lab Files folder on the desktop of the Main
Add a New Content Source
Add our first content source:
1. Navigate to the Content & Policies tab

2. Click NEW

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Add a CloudFormation Template Source
The first content source we are going to add is an S3 bucket hosting some
CloudFormation Templates.
1. In the Type dropdown, choose AWS CloudFormation Template.

2. In the Name field, enter trading cfts
3. In the Bucket name field, type vmware-cft
4. Set the Bucket access policy to Public
5. Click on VALIDATE to ensure that all of the data has been entered correctly
6. In the Account drop-down, select AWS Cloud Account
7. In the Region drop-down, select us-west-1
8. Finally, click CREATE & IMPORT

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Refresh the Content Sources View
We are automatically directed back to the Content Sources screen, where we see our
new trading CloudFormation Templates content source.
1. Note that the import process will initially show 0 items imported
2. Click the refresh arrow
View Content Import Details
Once we have refreshed the screen, we note that only 11/15 items imported. Thus, 4
items failed to import.
1. Click the error icon to review the details

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View Import Failure Details
The pop-up will display the error messages detailing why the remaining 4 items could
not be imported. This allows us to perform some validation when importing, to make
sure that we don't publish anything to the catalog that would not work.
1. Once finished reviewing the errors, click X to close the error details window
Share the Imported Content
Before we can request new content in the catalog, we need to share the content to the
project.

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1. Navigate to Content Sharing

2. For project, select HOL Project
3. Click + ADD ITEMS
1. Select the checkbox for the items in trading cfts

2. Click SAVE
Now we can visit the catalog and request one of the CloudFormation Templates!

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View the Service Catalog
1. Click the Catalog tab

2. Find the Apache web server catalog item, and click REQUEST

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Submit a Request
All the fields presented in the request form are exposed by the CloudFormation Template
as inputs, and need to be completed in order to submit the request.
1. For the Deployment name, enter cft1

2. For Project, ensure HOL Project is selected
3. For Key Name, ensure Hands-On Labs is selected
4. Leave the remaining fields with their default values, and click SUBMIT

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Watch the Deployment Progress
Once we submit the request, we are navigated to the Deployments tab, where we can
watch the progress of our ctf1 deployment. The provisioning may take a few minutes to
complete.
1. Once the deployment has completed, copy (CTRL+C) the website URL to the
clipboard
2. Open a new browser tab
Validate the Deployment

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1. Paste (CTRL+V) the website URL, and hit the ENTER key
If we reach a screen telling us we have successfully launched the AWS CloudFormation

sample, we have confirmed that the website has come up successfully.
Lab Housekeeping
Once you are happy with the state of the deployment, we should delete our cft1
deployment:
1. Return to the Service Broker tab

2. For our cft1 deployment, click the ACTIONS menu
3. Click Delete
4. When prompted that the action cannot be undone, click SUBMIT (not shown)

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Navigate to Cloud Assembly Blueprints
Now that we have successfully imported and provisioned CloudFormation Templates, we

are going to create a content source for Cloud Assembly blueprints. This will involve
creating a new blueprint.
Navigate to Cloud Assembly:
1. Click on the Cloud Services menu in the top-right corner

Create a Blueprint
Now let's create a blueprint using an existing YAML file:

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2. Click UPLOAD
Set Initial Blueprint Settings
1. Enter a name like module 5

2. For Project, select HOL Project
3. For Upload file, click No file chosen
4. Navigate to Desktop > Lab Files and select 2073-02-M5-vsphere-
machine.yaml (not shown)
5. Leave the rest of the default field values as-is, then click UPLOAD

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Edit the Blueprint
In the Blueprints screen, open the module 5 blueprint we just created:
1. Click the name of module 5 blueprint to open it for editing
Version the Blueprint
The blueprint needs to be versioned before it will be available in Service Broker:
1. Click VERSION to version the blueprint for release

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Version the Blueprint for Release
1. For version, enter 1.0

2. Enter a description
3. Leave the Release this version to catalog check box unchecked
4. Click CREATE
While the Release this version to the catalog option is a shorter way to accomplish
what we will be doing in our lab, we want to learn how to do this manually as part of this
exercise.
View Blueprint Version History
The versioned blueprint must be released before it can be published in Service Broker.
Let's release it.
1. Click VERSION HISTORY at the top of the blueprint

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Release the Blueprint
1. Click RELEASE for version 1.0

2. In the Release Version confirmation window, click the RELEASE button (not
shown)
3. Click the back arrow to return to the blueprint editor
4. Click the CLOSE button on the blueprint (not shown)
Return to Service Broker
Return to Service Broker:

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2. Click Service Broker
Add Another Content Source
Create another content source for our Cloud Assembly content:
1. Click the Content & Policies tab

2. Click Content Sources
3. Click NEW
Configure the Content Source

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1. For Type, select Cloud Assembly Blueprint

2. For the name, type cloud assembly
3. For the source project, select HOL Project
4. Click VALIDATE
5. We should get a message that 1 item (our module 5 blueprint) was successfully
found for this content source
6. Click CREATE & IMPORT
Share the Imported Blueprint
project.

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1. Click Content Sharing

1. Select the checkbox for the cloud assembly content source

2. Click SAVE
Create a Lease Policy

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Before we go to the Service Catalog to deploy our catalog item, let's create a 10-day
lease policy.
1. Under Policies, click Definitions

2. Click + NEW POLICY
Choose Lease Policy
1. Select Lease Policy

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Set Lease Policy Details
1. Enter the name Organization Lease

2. Click on the Deployment criteria to select the following:
◦ blueprintId
◦ eq
◦ module 5
3. Observe that the default Maximum Lease is 10 days

4. For Grace period (days), enter 1
5. Leave all other settings as default, and click CREATE

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We have created a 10-day lease policy with a 1-day grace period for our module 5
blueprint. That means that a module 5 deployment can be initially active for up to 10
days before the lease expires, and then there is a grace period of 1 day before the
machine is destroyed. For our purposes, we have left all other settings as default. A brief
word on these settings:
Scope allows you to set a lease either for a specific project or for the overall
organization. Organization level policies are processed before project level policies.
Enforcement type allows you to set a hard policy or a soft policy. Hard policies are
processed before soft policies.
If multiple policies exist, the most restrictive policies are enforced.
For more information, see How do I configure vRealize Automation Service Broker
deployment leases using policies.

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View to the Service Catalog
Now it's time to request a machine for the cloud assembly blueprint we relased.

2. Find the module 5 tile, and click REQUEST

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Submit Your Request
1. Enter the deployment name mod5

3. For Hostname, enter module5
4. For Cost Center, enter 123-456
5. Click SUBMIT
Track the Deployment

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We want to verify the lease policy is applied once it is provisioned, but it might take
several minutes to complete, so let's move on to the next exercise for now.
Now that we have successfully imported and provisioned Cloud Automation blueprints,
let's do the same with vRealize Orchestrator workflows.
Launch the vRealize Orchestrator web client:

2. Click Orchestrator

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Explore a vRealize Orchestrator workflow
We will demonstrate how to add an Orchestrator workflow to the Service Broker catalog
using a library workflow, Create directory in guest.
To view the workflow's details:
1. Under Library, click Workflows

2. In the Filter... field, search for create dir
3. For the Create directory in guest workflow, click DETAILS

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Review the vRealize Orchestrator Workflow
1. Once you've reviewed the workflow, click CLOSE

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Add Another Content Source
Now let's create another content source for our Orchestrator content:

2. Click Content Sources
3. Click NEW
Configure the Content Source
1. For Type, select vRealize Orchestrator Workflow

2. For the name, type orchestrator
3. Under Workflows, click ADD

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Select the Workflow
1. In the Search workflows field, type create dir and hit ENTER
2. Select the checkbox for workflow Create directory in guest
3. Click ADD
Create the Content Source
1. Back in the New Content Source screen, click CREATE & IMPORT

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Ensure Content is Imported
1. Back in the Content Sources screen, click the refresh arrow

2. Ensure that our orchestrator content source shows 1/1 number of items, for our
one imported Orchestrator workflow
Share the Imported Workflow
project.

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1. Click Content Sharing

1. Select the checkbox for the orchestrator content source

2. Click SAVE

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View the Service Catalog
Now let's request to run the workflow we just imported:

2. Find the Create director in guest tile, and click REQUEST

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Submit Your Request
1. Enter the deployment name mod52

3. For Virtual machine, enter and select app and wait for the list to auto-populate
with discovered machines then click to select app-01a
4. For Guest path, type /usr/mod5
5. For Password, type VMware1!
6. For Username, type root
7. Click SUBMIT

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Track the Deployment
1. Here, we can monitor the progress of our workflow deployment
2. Wait until the workflow has completed, which has occurred once the deployment
displays 1 Resource

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Check the New Directory in vSphere
As a final confirmation that the mod52 vRealize Orchestrator request ran successfully,
let's confirm the new folder was created via the vSphere Web Console.

4. Click Login

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Launch the vSphere Web Console
Launch the Web Console for the machine:
1. Navigate and fully expand the Hosts and Clusters menu if not done
automatically
2. Find and select app-01a
3. In the machine summary in the right-hand pane, click Launch Web Console
4. In the Launch Console dialog box, select Web Console and click OK (not
shown)
This will launch a console to log into the machine in a new tab.
Login to the Machine
1. Login with the following credentials:

◦ Username: root
Attempt to Navigate to the New Directory

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Once logged in, navigate to the new directory:
1. Entering cd /usr/mod5
Validate That the Directory Exists
1. If directory creation was successful, we should be navigated to the mod5

directory
Check Deployment Lease
Let's check on the mod5 virtual machine that was provisioned in the earlier exercise:
1. Return to the Service Broker tab (not shown)

2. Navigate to the Deployments tab
3. For the mod5 deployment, confirm that the build has completed, which we know
if it shows 2 resources
4. Once the mod5 build has completed, confirm that it Expires in 10 days
◦ This demonstrates that the10-day lease policy we created was applied
successfully
Lab Housekeeping

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provisioned.
1. For the mod5 deployment, click the ACTIONS menu

3. When prompted that the action cannot be undone, click SUBMIT (not shown)
Summary
We have just demonstrated how to add content to the Service Broker catalog from
CloudFormation templates, Cloud Assembly blueprints, and vRealize Orchestrator
workflows.
For more information, visit the following product documentation:
• Add CloudFormation templates to the Service Broker catalog

• Add Cloud Assembly blueprints to the Service Broker catalog
• Add vRealize Orchestrator workflows to the Service Broker catalog

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Working with Custom Forms

In vRealize Automation Service Broker, we can customize the icon that represents the
content, as well as the request form for imported blueprints or templates.
When customizing the request form, we can also design the input parameters that allow
the user requesting a catalog item to provide the values, as well as customize how the
custom options are presented in the form.
Let's look at how to design a custom form.
Navigate to the Content Forms Designer
To add or modify custom forms in Service Broker:

2. Click Content
3. For module 5, click its vertical ellipses button
4. Click Customize form (not shown)

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Design a Custom Form Text Field
We are brought to the custom form editor.
We'll start by defining the behavior of the hostname field:
1. Click the Hostname field in the design palette
Define Constraints of a Field

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Let's restrict the length and set of characters that can be entered for the hostname
field:
1. On the right-hand side, click the Constraints tab

2. For Regular expression, type ^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$
◦ This restricts the hostname field to alphanumerics
3. Click the caret next to Regular expression to expand its options

4. Under Validation error message, type Alphanumeric characters only
5. For minimum value, type 6
◦ This means the hostname must be at least 6 characters in length
6. For maximum value, type 15

◦ This means the hostname must be no more than 15 characters in length
That was easy. Now let's try something more interesting.
Define a Field As Hidden
We will first make the deployment a hidden field:
1. Click the Deployment Name field in the design palette

2. On the right-hand side, click the Appearance tab
3. For the Visibility field, select No

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Design a Computed Value Field
We will set the deployment name based on the inputted hostname:
1. Click the Values tab

2. Click the caret icon next to Default value to expand its options
3. For Value source, select Computed value
4. For Operator, select Concatenate
5. Click ADD VALUE
6. Under the new Constant field that appears, type Deployment-
7. Click ADD VALUE once more, then for the new Constant field that appears,
change it to Field, then select Hostname
Activate the Custom Form

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The custom form won't be displayed to the end user until it is activated.
Let's activate it:
1. At the top of the design canvas, enable Activate custom form
Save the Custom Form
Finally save the changes we have made to the custom form.
1. At the bottom-left of the custom form designer, click SAVE

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Test the Custom Form
Now we will test out our custom form from the service catalog.
1. Click Catalog
2. Find the module 5 catalog item tile and click REQUEST

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Test Minimum Length Constraint
1. In the Hostname field, type mod

2. When an error icon is displayed, mouseover it
Note that the error message notifies us that the entry violates the minimum length for
the field.
Test Maximum Length Constraint
1. In the Hostname field, type module5abcxyz123


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Note that the error message notifies us that the entry violates the maximum length for
the field.
Test Regular Expression Constraint
1. In the Hostname field, type module5@

Note that the error message notifies us that the entry is invalid, and we see the
validation error message, Alphanumeric characters only, that we provided for the
regular expression constraint.

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Test Computed Value
1. In the Hostname field, type module5

2. For Cost Center, enter 123456
3. Click SUBMIT
View the Deployment Name
We are automatically redirected to the Deployments tab.
1. Verify that the name of our latest deployment is computed as Deployment-

module5

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minutes.
Now let's enhance our form once more with a dropdown populated via an external
source, a vRealize Orchestrator action.
Launch the vRealize Orchestrator web client:

2. Click Orchestrator

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Explore a vRealize Orchestrator Action
One of your integration engineers has built an action that will provide a list of cost
centers.
To inspect the action:
1. Under Library, click Actions

2. In the Filter... field, type getCostCenters and hit ENTER
3. Find the getCostCenters action and click DETAILS

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Review the Action
1. Click the Script tab

2. Notice that the Return type is an array of strings
◦ Note: The Properties type is also an accepted return type for custom form
external sources
3. When you are finished reviewing the action, click CLOSE

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Go to the Content Forms Designer
Let's modify our module 5 custom form once more:

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2. Click Content
3. For module 5, and click its vertical ellipses button
4. Click Customize form (not shown)
Set a DropDown Field
Let's update the Cost Center field to use our vRealize Orchestrator action:
1. Click the Cost Center field in the design palette

2. In the Appearance tab, change Display type to DropDown
3. Click the Values tab

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Set the DropDown External Source
1. In the Values tab, click the caret icon next to Value options
2. Set Value source to External source
3. Under Select action, start typing the name of our action, getCost and wait for
the list to populate
4. When the getCostCenters action appears in the search results, select it
5. At the bottom-left of page, click SAVE (not shown) to save the changes to the
custom form

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Test the Custom Form
Now we will test out the latest changes to our custom form from the service catalog.
1. Click Catalog
2. Find the module 5 catalog item tile and click REQUEST

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Test the External Source DropDown
1. Click the Cost Center field to view its values
This is a great way to dynamically retrieve data values from a single source of truth.
Summary
We have just demonstrated various ways you can design a custom form to enhance the
end-user experience.
For more information, visit the following product documentation at Learn more about
vRealize Automation Service Broker custom forms.

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Conclusion
In this module, we looked at how to import existing content into Service Broker. We
created content sources for CloudFormation templates, Cloud Assembly blueprints, and
vRealize Orchestrator workflows. We also configured custom forms to enhance the end-
user experience.
Just another day in the multi-cloud world.
• Module 1 - Foundation - Getting Started with vRealize Automation Cloud Lab

• Module 2 - Building Public Cloud blueprints with Cloud Assembly
• Module 3 - Out-of-the-Box Integrations
• Module 4 - Extensibility Basics
• Module 6 - Integrating Development Tools into Codestream pipeline
How to End Lab
You can continue on to additional lessons in the lab. However, if you want to end the
lab:

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Module 6 - Integrating
Development Tools into
Code Stream Pipelines
(30 minutes)

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Introduction
VMware Code Stream provides continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD)
software that enables you to deliver software rapidly and reliably, with little overhead.
VMware Code Stream supports deploying monolithic legacy applications, as well as
Docker and Kubernetes containers running on multiple clouds. VMware Code Stream
simplifies the ability to build, test, deploy your applications, and increases your
productivity as you release source code from the development repository, through
testing, to production. VMware Code Stream supports custom applications, commercial
applications, and objects such as blueprints.
With VMware Code Stream, you create pipelines that automate your entire DevOps
lifecycle while using existing development tools such as Git and Jenkins.
In this lab you will learn how to integrate Code Stream with a number of native
endpoints to deliver a robust release process.
This module contains the following lessons:
• Accessing Code Stream

• Creating a Code Stream Pipeline
• Executing a Code Stream Pipeline
Lab Captains: Ed Bontempo, Frances Wong
Introduction to Lab Scenario
Rainpole Systems is an electronics manufacturer located in Palo Alto, CA. Rainpole

designs and manufactures electronic devices for use in everything from aircraft
instrumentation to home automation. Given the diversity of their product set, Rainpole
needs to develop cloud-based IT services to support the increasing demands of the
business units.
Rainpole's developers have begun to modernize their applications in a variety of ways,

largely without the assistance of the infrastructure operations teams due to the

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perception that IT is "too slow." However, the initial efforts have proven to be costly and
complex, and Rainpole Systems is looking for a more comprehensive approach to
application modernization.
Rainpole's infrastructure teams have begun to standardize on vRealize Automation to

deliver infrastructure as blueprints. However, several Rainpole development teams use
different tools, such as Git and Jenkins, that the infrastructure teams are either
unfamiliar with or have no visibility into.
Rainpole Systems has made the decision to use vRealize Code Stream as part of a larger
process to build application release pipelines combining infrastructure operations and
developer tools, in order to bridge the gap between the teams and allow them to
combine efforts in modernizing their applications. For a target application, the Rainpole
teams have chosen RPWeb - a monolithic application used by company employees to
keep up with company news and events, access and understand their benefits, and
more. This application is an important part of the employee experience, however it has
languished over the past several years and is in need of an upgrade.
In this lab exercise, you will build a Code Stream pipeline to start the process of building
an end to end release process to test the RPWeb application. This pipeline will
represent the first steps of Rainpole's infrastructure operations and developers
beginning to work more closely together.

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Accessing Code Stream

In this exercise, we will log in to vRealize Automation and navigate to Code Stream, and
then we will look at some of the existing configuration and available options prior to
getting started with creating a pipeline.
1. Click the Google Chrome icon to open the browser.
1. Click the vRealize Automation bookmark to navigate to vRealize Automation.

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Log In to vRealize Automation
1. Click Sign in to log in to vRealize Automation using the following credentials:
Username: holadmin
Password: VMware1!

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Open Code Stream
1. Click the Code Stream service to open Code Stream.
View Guided Setup Diagram
On first login, the Guided Setup diagram will be displayed. This diagram can help to
walk you through configuring Code Stream, creating and running pipelines, and viewing
dashboards covering specific use cases. This lab exercise will not use this diagram, so it
can be dismissed.
1. Click Continue to close the Guided Setup diagram (note that this diagram can be
accessed at a later time if desired.)

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Close the Guided Setup Sidebar
Closing the Guided Setup Diagram will move the Guided Setup process to a sidebar on
the right. This sidebar allows you to go through specific steps of the Guided Setup
process individually. We will close this sidebar as well in order to provide enough screen
space for this lab.
1. Click Close to close the Guided Setup sidebar

2. Note the Guided Setup link above the filter icon - this link can be used at any
time to open the sidebar again.

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View the Code Stream Interface
The Code Stream interface includes multiple sections. We will not explore all of them in
detail in this lab, but the list includes:
• Dashboards
• Executions
• User Operations
• Pipelines
• Custom Integrations
• Configure
• Triggers
1. Click the Projects link to view the currently defined projects.

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View Projects
Several projects have already been defined in vRealize Automation for this exercise,
along with exercises in other modules in this lab.
1. Note the Rainpole Project listing. This is the project that Rainpole Systems
developer and operations teams will use for this pipeline.
2. Click Endpoints to continue.

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View Code Stream Endpoints
Configuring endpoints allows Code Stream to integrate with additional solutions outside
of vRealize Automation.
1. Note the Jenkins endpoint. We will be using this endpoint in a task in a Code
Stream pipeline later in this module.
2. Click +NEW ENDPOINT to open the New Endpoint screen.

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View Endpoint Options
In addition to the endpoints already configured for this lab, Code Stream allows for
several endpoint options.
1. Click the select box next to Type to expand the list and view all available
endpoint types.
2. Click Cancel to exit this page.
Next, we will create our first pipeline for the Rainpole Web application.

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Creating a Code Stream Pipeline

In this exercise, we will create a simple pipeline in Code Stream that will deploy an
instance of Rainpole's RPWeb application for review. This pipeline will integrate tasks to
combine a Cloud Assembly blueprint deployment as well as execution of a Jenkins job to
deploy and install the application.
Click the Pipelines Link
1. Click the Pipelines link to open the Pipelines list.

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Create a New Pipeline
1. Click +NEW PIPELINE to open the new pipeline options.
Pipelines can be created from scratch, or via the use of Smart Templates for common
pipeline types.
2. Click Blank Canvas to create the pipeline.
Name the Pipeline

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1. For Name, enter Rainpole RPWeb

2. Click on the Project select box and select Rainpole Project from the list
3. Click CREATE
View the Pipeline Design Canvas
With the pipeline name and assigned to a project, the pipeline design canvas will open.
1. New Pipelines are Disabled by default. You can disable and enable pipelines to
make them available for execution.
2. Code Stream uses Stages to determine how you want to configure your pipeline
to execute.
3. There are 4 tabs at the top categorizing the data that you can use in this pipeline.
We will not be exploring these additional tabs in this limited lab.
4. Click +Stage in the design canvas to create a new stage.
Create a Pipeline Stage

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Code Stream pipelines consist of one or more stages, and each stage consists of one or
more tasks. In this exercise we will only be creating a single-stage pipeline.
By default, stages are named "Stage#", starting at Stage0. But these names can be
changed.
1. Click on Stage name in the details tab and enter Test to rename the stage.
2. Click on +Sequential Task to create a new task.
Create a Pipeline Task
1. Note the change to task options in the design canvas when the first task is
created. Code Stream tasks can run in sequence or in parallel.
2. Click on the text box next to Task name and enter rpweb Deploy to rename the
task.
3. Click on the Type select box and select Blueprint.

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View the Blueprint Task Parameters
With the type of task defined, additional options will appear.
1. Note the execution options for this task. Failure will cause the pipeline execution
to stop by default, but checking the Continue on failure checkbox will allow
pipeline execution to continue. The Execute task options also allow you to define
conditions for which the task will execute; if the conditions are not met, the
specific task will be skipped.
2. Tasks also provide output parameters based on task type. These parameter
values can be used to provide parameters to other tasks in the pipeline, or as
conditions for task execution.
3. Click on Cloud Assembly Blueprints to select it as a Blueprint source and
expose additional configuration options.

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Enter the Cloud Assembly Blueprint Details
Code Stream integrates natively with Cloud Assembly to use blueprints and
deployments defined there inside pipelines. Although this task will create a new
deployment from a versioned blueprint, Code Stream tasks can update existing
deployments as well. For more information on Cloud Assembly blueprints, go to Module
2.
1. Enter Rainpole Web for the Depolyment Name.

2. Click on the Blueprint select box and select rpweb to use this specific blueprint.
3. Click on the Version select box and select version 2.

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Create a Second Sequential Task
1. Click on +Sequential Task to create a second task in this stage. We want this
task to execute after the first task is complete, hence the creation of another
sequential task.
Define the Second Task
1. Click on the text box next to Task name and enter rpweb Install.
2. Click on the select box next to Type and select Jenkins from the list, to add
Jenkins task parameters.

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View Jenkins Task Parameters
1. Note the options for this type of task - they are not the same as the options
available when the first task was defined. Additional options for Jenkins tasks will
be shown once an endpoint and job are defined as well.
2. Note that this task produces different output parameters as well. As with the
Blueprint task, these parameters can be used as parameters or as conditions in
subsequent tasks.

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Define Jenkins Task Parameters
1. Click on the select box next to Endpoint, and select Jenkins (this is the endpoint
definition that we viewed in the previous exercise.)
2. Click on the select box next to Job, and select the Build-RPWeb job
The Build-RPWeb job was created by the Rainpole developers to install the RPWeb
application onto an existing server. This job can be used by Code Stream in
combination with the Cloud Assembly deployment in the previous task, to quickly
deploy a server prepared for the RPWeb application and to install the application itself.
While this specific Jenkins job does not have any parameters defined, if a parameterized
Jenkins job is used, parameters will be added to this task to be defined once the job is
chosen.

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View the Complete Pipeline
The first code pipeline for the RPWeb application is complete. While this specific
example is basic, Code Stream is able to tie together multiple development tools like
Jenkins, Git, Artifactory, and more, along with Cloud Assembly, vRealize Orchestrator,
and several types of Kubernetes endpoints for modern workloads. With the ability to
integrate many solutions together into multi-stage, conditional pipelines, Code Stream
allows developers and operations teams to work together to streamline the code release
process.

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This initial pipeline will allow Rainpole's operations team and developers to begin to
work together on deploying updates to the RPWeb application. With this initial
integration in place, the Rainpole teams will be able to expand on this pipeline going
forward as they modernize the RPWeb application.
With this initial pipeline complete, we will prepare the pipeline and execute it in a later
exercise.
1. Click Save to save the pipeline.

2. Click Close to return to the pipelines list.

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Executing a Code Stream Pipeline

With a pipeline created, it is now time to execute it and view the results.
Verify the Current Application
Before executing the pipeline, we will verify that the application is not running in this
environment.

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1. Click the + to open a new browser tab.
View the Application
1. Enter http://rpweb-01a.corp.local in the URL box.
The RPWeb application is not currently running in this environment, so the connection
request will eventually time out. Once the pipeline execution is complete, we will return
to this tab.
2. Click on the Code Stream browser tab to return to Code Stream.

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Enable the Code Stream Pipeline
By default, pipelines in Code Stream will be in a disabled state. This is essentially a

draft state, and pipelines must be enabled before they can be executed.
1. Click on Actions to open the list of actions for this pipeline.

2. Click Enable to enable the pipeline.

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Execute the Code Stream Pipeline
1. Click Run to begin the pipeline execution.
Execute the Code Stream Pipeline (Continued)
Additional execution-specific data can be provided before the pipeline execution begins.

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1. Click RUN to begin the execution.
View the Execution in Progress
With the pipeline execution underway, we will view the execution in progress.
1. Click Executions to navigate to the Executions section.
The existing execution may be queued or it might already be in progress. The tab
provides high-level information, but we can click on the execution itself to see more
detail.
2. Click the execution name Rainpole RPWeb#1 to view the execution in detail.

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View the Execution in Progress (Continued)
Viewing the execution details shows the current progress of the execution, as well as
details on input and output parameters, if used. Details for specific tasks can be viewed
as well.
1. Click either task to view execution details specific to that task (not shown.) As
each task completes, details will update to show status, duration, and populated
parameters from the task.
2. Click the Rainpole RPWeb#1 execution name to view the overall status of the
execution.

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View the Completed Execution
When the deployment is complete, the Execution screen will show a status of
COMPLETED and the duration for the entire execution will be specified. Input and
output parameters will also be defined and populated, however we are not using
parameters in this introductory pipeline.

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View the RPWeb Application
1. Navigate back to the rpweb-01a.corp.local browser tab

2. Click Reload to reload the URL.
Note the deployed RPWeb application. Both the server hosting the application and the
application itself were provisioned live, using different tools, in a single Code Stream
pipeline. Now that Rainpole's developers and operations teams can combine efforts to
deliver infrastructure and the application seamlessly, this application can be
modernized to deliver the improved employee experience that Rainpole Systems is
looking for.
3. Click the Code Stream tab to return to Code Stream.

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View Pipeline Dashboard
Now that we have executed a Code Stream pipeline, we can view dashboards of pipeline
execution statistics. Code Stream will automatically create a dashboard for each
pipeline once it has been executed at least one time, and customized dashboards can
be created as well.
1. Click Pipeline Dashboards to view available dashboards.

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View RPWeb Pipeline Dashboard
The Rainpole RPWeb pipeline dashboard is now available to view.
1. Click Open to open the pipeline dashboard.

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View the Pipeline Dashboard
Pipeline dashboards summarize a variety of information related to executions of the

pipeline. The more executions of a pipeline occur, the more data will be available in this
dashboard. Over time, this will allow the Rainpole operations and development teams
to view statistics related to the RPWeb pipeline, trends in recent executions, and
statistics on the executions themselves. This will provide data to help the teams
optimize their process for the Rainpole application as it is modernized.
1. Note the status boxes for the most recent execution, and executions over time
(last 14 days by default.)
2. Note the statistics for the executions, including Mean Time To Deliver (MTTD,)
Mean Time To Failure (MTTF,) Mean Time Between Deliveries (MTBD,) and Mean
Time To Recover (MTTR.) Each of these statistics will begin to populate with
additional executions.
3. Scroll down to view additional details on execution stages, tasks, and trends.

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Conclusion
In this module, we introduced you to Code Steam through the following topics:
• Reviewing Code Stream endpoints for git, Artifactory and Jenkins

• We walked you through creating your first pipeline leveraging a blueprint from
Cloud Assembly
• We tested your first pipeline based on Cloud Assembly and Jenkins
Although this lab was only a starting example, hopefully you have been able to
understand the use case of immutable infrastructure by combining Cloud Assembly and
Code Stream.
You can select one of the links below to jump to the module of your choice.
• Module 2 - Building Blueprints with Cloud Assembly

• Module 3 - Integration with GitHub and NSX-T On Demand Networking
• Module 4 - vRealize Automation Extensibility Basics
• Module 5 - Managing Content with Service Broker
How to End Lab

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Conclusion
Thank you for participating in the VMware Hands-on Labs. Be sure to visit
http://hol.vmware.com/ to continue your lab experience online.
Lab SKU: HOL-2073-02-CMP
Version: 20200422-005021

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Configure Public Cloud Accounts If Not Already Done ......................................... 270

Lab Module List:

• Module 1 - Foundation - Getting Started with vRealize Automation (10 minutes)

• Narmadha Moorthy, Application Developer-IT, India

Location of the Main Console

Alternate Methods of Keyboard Data Entry

Click and Drag Lab Manual Content Into Console Active

Accessing the Online International Keyboard

Click once in active console window

1. Click once in the active console window.

Click on the @ key

1. Click on the "@ key".

Notice the @ sign entered in the active console window.

Activation Prompt or Watermark

This cosmetic issue has no effect on your lab.

Look at the lower right portion of the screen

You will need about 10 minutes to complete this module.

• Narmadha Moorthy, Application Developer -IT,India

vRealize Automation 8.0 Modern Architecture

Highlights of What's new in vRealize Automation 8.0 :

• Modern architecture : The modern, container-based architecture is easier to

vRealize Automation 8.0 Components

1. VMware Cloud Assembly : Automation and configuration of cloud services.

Update The Lab Files Repository If Not

Open GitHub Desktop

Open the GitHub Desktop application.

Check the Online Repository For New Files

To check the online repository for updates,

1. Click Fetch origin

Pull Updates From the Online Repository

1. Click Pull origin

Access Files In The Local Repository

Close GitHub Desktop

1. Click the X to close GitHub Desktop

Configure Public Cloud Accounts If Not

Minimize Open Windows

If any windows are open so you can't see the desktop:

Verify That the Lab Status is Ready

Launch The Configuration Script

Successful Public Cloud Configuration

Understanding Cloud Accounts and

Launch vRealize Automation 8.0

1. Launch chrome browser and click on the vRealize Automation bookmark

2. Click on Sign in button.

Launch Cloud Assembly Component

1. Click on Cloud Assembly to understand more about designing a cloud agnostic

Navigating to Your Cloud Accounts

To get to the Cloud Accounts page:

1. Click the Infrastructure tab.

AWS Cloud Account

More AWS Cloud Account Settings

On the lower page, we see some additional options.

Navigate to Cloud Zones

What is a Cloud Zone anyway?

1. Expand the Configure menu item and select Cloud Zones.

AWS Cloud Zone

AWS Compute Tab

AWS Projects Tab

Understanding Projects In Cloud

Navigate to the Projects tab

1. Select Projects from the Configure menu.

The HOL Project