Quick Guide to VCF Automation for VCD Administrators

 

Create Global Custom Naming for deployed resources in Aria Automation Assembler (VMware Cloud Assembly)

 The Global Custom Naming feature is introduced in Aria Automation (vRealize Automation) to provide options for the customers to generate the name for Aria Automation resource types based on the Custom Naming template in the organization or projects

Available in following vRA/Aria Automation versions

• vRealize Automation version above 8.6.1 and above
• vRealize Automation Cloud

Generating Custom name with custom properties to adopt the naming standards of the customer

To use custom properties in a speific Global Custom Name they needs to be defined in a property group to have a flexibility to gererate the names in required pattern

NOTE:
A custom property value in the Aria Automation Templates (VMware Cloud Templates) take precedence over the same property value in the custom name.
The Project-level custom names take precedence over organization-level names
Limitation : You can assign only one Custom Naming for one Project, but it can contain options for multiple resource types
If you do not define naming templates for all resource types, the undefined resource types default to the organization template. If an organization template does not exist, the undefined resource types default to the system naming.

To Keep is simple I am using Naming Standards defined below for generating the name for Virtual Machine, similar approach can be followed for other resource types.

Virtual Machine Naming Standard

Below is the naming standard that need to be adopted to name the Virtual Machines

<Country><Organization><Function><Environment><OperatingSystem><ServerRole><RunningNumericValue>

By defining the custom naming based on the naming standard of the Virtual Machine, the name generated at the time of provisioning will be based on the values defined in the property group and the option selected while ordering using Aria Automation Consumption (VMware Service Broker)

Example

In this case the naming generated for Windows Server “INKMVPWAP0001”

• IN is Country,
• KM is the Organization,
• V stands for Virtual Machine,
• P stands for Production Environment,
• W stands for Windows Server Operating System,
• AP stands for Application Server,
• 0001 is the four digit sequence number for the server.

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Now lets get on to the job to create Project Global Custom Naming.

Create a property group named ResourceNamingPG.

1. Select Infrastructure > Design > Property Groups and click New Property Group.
2. Click Input Values.
3. Enter the Name ResourceNamingPG.
4. Enter Display Name Server Naming Standards
5. For the Scope, select Available for any project. (If you want to use the same naming for all your projects, else select the specific project)
6. Click New Property configure the following values and enter the name

Property Name	Type	Default Value
Country	String	IN
Org	String	KM
Function	String	V
ENV	String	P
OS	String	W
Role	String	AP

Add the Key Pair Values for multiple Value of each Property which will be available as selection option while ordering, I am including only one Example here for Country and repeated the steps create other properties except for Server Functions which has static value. 

Key	Value
United States Of America	US
United Kingdom	UK
India	IN

6. Click Create.
7. Click Create to save the new property group

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Configure custom properties for project.

Follow the steps to create Custom Properties for Specific Project (Can be assinged to multiple projects)

1. Select Infrastructure > Administration > Projects and open the project.
2. Click the Provisioning tab and locate the Custom Properties section.
3. Enter as the Property name and Value from the above table
4. Click Save.

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Create a project level custom naming template for Virtual Machines

1. Select Infrastructure > Administration > Custom Names and click New Custom Name.
2. Enter the Name.
3. Select Project as the Scope.

4. Click New Naming Template and configure the following options.

Options	Value
Resource Type	Machine
Template format	${ResourceNamingPG.Country}-${ResourceNamingPG.Org}-${ResourceNamingPG.Function}-${ResourceNamingPG.ENV}-${ResourceNamingPG.OS}-${ResourceNamingPG.Role}-${####}
Starting counter value	1000
Increment step	1

5. Assign to the Project

After saving you can see the newly created “Custom Name” in the Custom Names

Adding as input parameter in Aria Automation Templates (VMware Cloud Templates)

Testing

NOTE : Please observe that there are few Deployment Options (Including Country) are with Dropdown, those are defined with multiple Key & Values in the Custom Property which allows the selection, that is the flexibility that allows generate the name by input parameters

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Repeat the steps for other resource types