Best practices to manage enterprise Active Directory is organizing servers by particular properties. For example, servers maybe put into different OU by role, business group or function…etc. Following is a vRO workflow sample to automate provisioning computers in proper OUs according to user choice in vRA Service Catalog. I’ll just give brief of each step in this article, so please make sure you understand both products before read this post.
[do_widget “Language Switcher” wrap=aside title=false]
I always prefer to think of workflow as a machine, split complex works to small easy piece. In this workflow I need grab virtual machine information from vRA, I created a workflow “Capture vRA VM Info“. I also need to convert the reference string value to AD object since vRO cannot recognize vRA string as OU object. So I created another work flow “Convert Role to OU“. Once I have the target OU object in hands, I can create computer account in Active Directory first, then join the machine to domain it will automatic associate with existing computer account. So I created last work flow “Create VM in OU“. The name maybe confuse, I should name it like “Create Computer account in OU” but due to the length limitation of workflow label. Following is how the whole vRO workflow looks like:
In my case, workflow put VM to proper OU according to which server role user chooses when provisioning new VM in vRA.
- Create a drop list in blue print.
- Duplicate workflow “workflow template” to “Capture vRA VM Info”, this workflow is used to get vRA VM information.
- Create a workflow “Convert Role to OU” to convert server role value (string) to OU object. If you don’t know how to do it, read my blog How to convert string to OU object in vRO. This workflow receives server role value from previous workflow and search AD and return AD object to next workflow.
- Duplicate workflow “Create a computer in an organizational unit” to “Create VM in OU“. This workflow is used to create computer account on specified OU. It receives AD object from previous workflow and VM name from first workflow, then create the computer account in specified OU accordingly.
