The VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator™ Plug-in for VMware Aria Automation™ integrates Automation Orchestrator with VMware Aria Automation. With the plug-in, you can run Automation Orchestrator workflows from your VMware Aria Automation instance. You can use the workflows that are provided with the plug-in to deploy and manage VMware Aria Automation resources.

Role of Automation Orchestrator with the Automation plug-in

Automation Orchestrator powers the Automation plug-in. You use the Automation Orchestrator Client to run and create workflows and access the Automation plug-in API.

You can use either the embedded Automation Orchestrator instance in your VMware Aria Automation deployment, or an external Automation Orchestrator server.

Installing the Automation plug-in

Depending on your Automation Orchestrator setup, you must either download and install the Automation plug-in yourself, or the plug-in might come preinstalled on your VMware Aria Automation environment.

The following table provides more information about each scenario.
Automation Orchestrator deployment VMware Aria Automation version Out of the box plug-in availability What to do
Embedded VMware Aria Automation 8.12.x Yes
  1. Configure vRealize Automation hosts.
  2. Start building your infrastructure.

External

 VMware Aria Automation 8.12.x No
  1. Download the plug-in from the VMware Marketplace.
  2. Install the plug-in on your Automation Orchestrator instance.
Extensibility Appliance VMware Aria Automation SaaS No
  1. Verify that you have a Automation Orchestrator integration in Automation Assembler. See Configure an Automation Orchestrator integration in Automation Assembler.
  2. Download the plug-in from the VMware Marketplace.
  3. Install the plug-in on your cloud-enabled Automation Orchestrator.

The Automation plug-in supports out-of-the-box proxy-based connection configurations on the VMware Aria Automation extensibility appliance. You can connect an external proxy with the VMware Aria Automation host connection object without any additional configuration changes.

Using the default Automation plug-in workflows and actions

The Automation plug-in provides out-of-the-box workflows for common tasks, such as host configuration workflows and infrastructure workflows. For a full list of available workflows, navigate to Library > Workflows in the Automation Orchestrator Client.

The plug-in library also contains predefined actions that you can use to build you own custom workflows. To access these actions, navigate to Library > Actions, and enter com.vmware.library.vra in the action search box.

Using the Automation plug-in inventory

The Automation Orchestrator inventory supports objects for hosts, cloud accounts, cloud zones, disks, machines, machine disks and snapshots, networks, projects, and other entities that are required as lookups for create/update workflows, such as tags, data collectors, regions, NSX-T and NSX-V cloud accounts.

To display all available inventory objects, navigate to Administration > Inventory > VMware Aria Automation in the Automation Orchestrator Client.

Accessing the Automation plug-in API

In the Automation Orchestrator API Explorer, you can search the Automation plug-in API and see the documentation for JavaScript objects that you can use in scripted elements. You can copy code from API elements and paste it into scripting boxes.

In the Automation Orchestrator API Explorer, click the VRA module in the left pane to expand the hierarchical list of Automation plug-in API scripting objects.

To access the API reference for your VMware Aria Automation version, go to https://VMware-Aria-Automation-hostname/automation-ui/api-docs.

For up-to-date VMware Aria Automation API documentation, see the VMware Aria Automation 8.12 API Programming Guide.