vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) is powerful workflow engine that many of our customers have been using to automate across a number of different VMware and 3rd party solutions. It is also a foundational component to vRealize Automation (vRA) and it enables our customers to build end-to-end IT and Developer workflows across different Clouds: Private, Public and Hybrid.

It should come as no surprise that existing vRO/vRA customers would like to take advantage of VMware Cloud on AWS and be able to add its vCenter Server instance to vRO for Automation purposes. A few weeks back, I had heard mixed results from our field and customers when attempting to add VMware Cloud on AWS vCenter Server endpoint to vRO. I was actually working with another customer on a related topic and I decided I give this a try in my lab, which was running the standalone vRO 7.5 Appliance.

I did indeed run into a problem when attempting to add vCenter Server as an endpoint in vRO. It turns out this was due to a bug with the vSphere vRO Plugin which has since been resolved with the latest vRO 7.6 release. In any case, there is a simple workaround for customers that are currently not running the latest vRO appliance and you can find the instructions below.

Configuring Authentication Provider

If you are deploying a brand new vRO Appliance, you need to first configure the authentication provider which determines how you authenticate from the vRO Client. One thing to note for VMware Cloud on AWS customers is that you can not use its vCenter Server as an authentication provider as it requires administrative privileges to register which customers do not have with the Cloud Admin account. This means if you wish to add a VMware Cloud on AWS vCenter Server endpoint, you must configure your vRO authentication provider to point to an existing on-premises vCenter Server.

Adding vCenter Server Endpoint

If you are using vRO 7.6 Appliance, adding a VMware Cloud on AWS vCenter Server just works and there is no additional workaround required. However, if you are not running the latest release and you attempt add the vCenter Server from your SDDC, you will run into the following error:

item: 'Add a vCenter Server instance/item3', state: 'failed', business state: 'Connection validation failed', exception: 'com.vmware.vim.vmomi.core.exception.UnmarshallException: Type 'ServiceContent' contains unrecognized property 'storageQueryManager' (Workflow:Add a vCenter Server instance / Validate (item2)#1)'

As mentioned earlier, the issue is with the vSphere vRO Plugin and we simply just need to update it to the latest version which can be download from here.



Once you have updated to the latest vSphere Plugin and the vRO service has restarted, you should now be able to add your vCenter Server instance from your SDDC!

vRA and VMware Cloud on AWS

One additional thing that I would like to mention is if you are running vRA 7.5, the embedded vRO instance does not have the same problem as the standalone vRO 7.5 Appliance. Once you have added a new vRO Endpoint in vRA, you can simply add the vCenter Server instance as shown in the screnshot below.