Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

Ever wish you were able to set more than one value from a single vRealize Automation (vRA) request input? Have you ever wished you could make some aspects of vRA more dynamic and flexible? Wish you could simplify the vRA request form? In this article I’m going to let the genie out of the bottle. All your wishes are about to come true. But before we summon our genie, let’s first dive into what it is that we are going to be wishing for. My wish is to have a simple vRA request page with only three inputs that can drive the outcome of every aspect of my request. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? We will find out soon enough.



Finished Result

Determine the needed Inputs

Determining what our inputs are going to be. For my scenario I need to the following three inputs:

The Environment (Production, Development, or Test) The Application (WordPress or Microsoft SQL) Compliance Needs (SOX or Non-SOX)

In my example, these are the only three items I need to know from the requester to build a server in my environment. The remaining info I can gather from the business group they belong to, what resources the workload is placed on, etc. I know every environment is different and many will require more than three inputs. Once you have read this entire 3-Part series, you will realize the number of inputs doesn’t matter. It’s how we use them that’s key.



Determine the outcome

What outcomes do we need to drive based on these inputs? Or, how will these help determine the outcome of the overall deployment? Will they influence items such as the machine hostname, Active Directory OU placement, vCenter Folder placement, vSphere tagging, application installation, etc?

To read the full article please visit the SovLabs blog located here.