Author: codyhosterman

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Creating a new Virtual/Hard Disk with vRealize Orchestrator

First off, there already is a built-in workflow for adding a new virtual disk so this isn’t exactly groundbreaking knowledge, but I think it is helpful to understand how it is constructed. Furthermore, most of the existing posts and community articles out there assume way too much about ones knowledge of reading the API guide and understanding what is needed.

So let’s boil it down to only what you need to know to create default, commonly used virtual disks. If you want more advanced configurations this should give you a good starting point. Knowing the basics makes it way it is easier to edit and change.

I will write this post on adding a new virtual disk and next I will write one on removing one.workflow Continue reading “Creating a new Virtual/Hard Disk with vRealize Orchestrator”

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Missing Actions for Specific vRealize Automation Custom Resources

So this one was driving me a bit nuts. In short, I was provisioning resources in vRA using XaaS (Anything as a Service) via vRealize Orchestrator workflows. In some situations the action items appeared for a given item type, and in other situations it did not for that same item type. Let me explain…

The resource in question is, in this case, a FlashArray snapshot. But that being said, it doesn’t really matter. Any custom resource will behave this way.

snapshotobjectdeinition

I also have some custom actions assigned to that type of resource (a FlashArray snapshot). So once I “own” that item in vRA I can do stuff to it (restore a datastore, create a new datastore, etc.).

customactions

So i noticed that some of my snapshots didn’t have all of my custom items assigned to it. Some did. Some didn’t. I had no idea why. Continue reading “Missing Actions for Specific vRealize Automation Custom Resources”

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1.7 Release of the FlashArray Workflow Package for vRealize Orchestrator

Finally starting to catch up on work after VMworld. A lot of blog posts queued up in my head that I want to start getting out. Here is the first. I have completed an update of the FlashArray workflow package with some bug fixes and some new workflows. As always the workflow package can be found here:

https://github.com/codyhosterman/orchestrator/blob/master/com.purestorage.codyhosterman.package

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Continue reading “1.7 Release of the FlashArray Workflow Package for vRealize Orchestrator”

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VMFS UNMAP switches block count

A recent question I got about my UNMAP PowerCLI script was it says it was using a certain block count but when I looked at the log it was using 200. Why?

Well I blogged before about why a given UNMAP process might revert to the default block count of 200 here. Essentially, if you indicate a block count larger than 1% of the free space of the VMFS ESXi will revert it to 200. Or if the VMFS is more than 75% full it will always override the block count back down to 200. Continue reading “VMFS UNMAP switches block count”

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vRealize Orchestrator, TLS 1.2 and Certificate Importing

As I have blogged about before, TLS 1.0 and SSL v3 were deprecated in Purity 4.7, requiring all connections to use either TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2. This affected a variety of integrations, some we updated, some you just had to alter their behavior. A few VMware products do not/did not use TLS 1.1/1.2 by default, so they either need to altered or upgraded. This almost invariably boiled down to the JDK version that was in use. vRealize Orchestrator is no exception.

vcologo

Continue reading “vRealize Orchestrator, TLS 1.2 and Certificate Importing”

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Running UNMAP with vRealize Orchestrator

Let me start out with saying I’m embarrassed I have only been using vRO for 8 months or so. It is AWESOME.

The FlashArray Workflow Package for vRealize Orchestrator has been updated to include two new objects:

  1. Auto-expand datastore policy template
  2. Workflow to run UNMAP on a datastore

The creation of the first part is explained in this post. But if you are using the FlashArray it is all built into the package, so you have to do very little work. I’ll explain in a bit.

The UNMAP workflow is generic–it can be used with any VMFS datastore that supports UNMAP. So it is included in the workflow package and it is also standalone for those of you who don’t have a FlashArray. You can get the standalone here:

https://github.com/codyhosterman/orchestrator/blob/master/vmfsunmap.workflow

Continue reading “Running UNMAP with vRealize Orchestrator”

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Automatic VMFS expansion with vCenter SNMP and vRealize Orchestrator

Virtual disk oversubscription is becoming increasingly common and so is allowing people to provision their own VMs. So increasing a datastore capacity is also an increasingly common operation. Because of the performance of flash, merged with ESXi features like VAAI ATS. Expanding a VMFS is easy. Expanding a storage volume these days is easy. But you still have to actually do it. What if I want to automate the process to respond to datastore capacity threshold limits? There are a variety of ways to achieve this. Let’s look at it via vCenter SNMP alerts and vRealize Orchestrator workflows. Continue reading “Automatic VMFS expansion with vCenter SNMP and vRealize Orchestrator”

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Increasing VMFS capacity with vRealize Orchestrator

I am working on adding some functionality to the FlashArray workflow package for vRealize Orchestrator and one of those features is automating the process to increase the capacity of a VMFS volume. The FlashArray potion of that is pretty straight forward but what of the VMFS portion? Not much on the internet directly about this. Luckily using the vCenter SDK with vRO, this is pretty easy. Continue reading “Increasing VMFS capacity with vRealize Orchestrator”

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Deeper detail on using parameters with the FlashArray Python toolkit

Last week I posted about getting started with the Python toolkit, now I wanted to go a little deeper today on using the toolkit beyond connecting/creating a volume. A question I have seen more than once is:

“okay, I understand connecting and getting basic information, but what if I want to pull statistics or more advanced information from the array besides what the default commands? The API glossary for the toolkit doesn’t say explicitly how I can get the information I want”

In short, just because the Python glossary doesn’t explicitly say how to do something or even if you can, it does not mean you can’t. It really depends on what the REST API can do.

Let me explain.

Continue reading “Deeper detail on using parameters with the FlashArray Python toolkit”