Automation Central is where you can create jobs to automate optimization actions which reclaim or rightsize VMs. You can also schedule additional actions such as powering on, powering off, and rebooting VMs and instances. Once you set up recurring jobs, you can track and obtain reports on them. You can customize jobs so that they only run based certain on parameters. For example, if you choose to delete a snapshot as an action, you can specify how old the snapshot must be before it is deleted. You can also schedule jobs from the Reclaim and Rightsizing pages, where you configure the job in the context of a recommendation provided by VMware Aria Operations.

Actions that you can Automate

You can automate the following actions using Automation Central:
Reclaim
  • Delete old snapshots
  • Delete idle VMs
  • Poweroff Idle VMs
  • Delete powered off VMs
Rightsize
  • Downsize oversized VMs
  • Scale-up undersized VMs
Other
Schedule additional actions such as powering on, powering off, and rebooting VMs and instances. The additional actions are based on the public cloud (GCP, AWS, Microsoft Azure) or vCenter adapter.

Where you find Automation Central

Click Automation Central in the left pane.

How Automation Central Works

In the Automation Central page you see a list of upcoming jobs and a calendar under the Schedule tab. The calendar displays all the jobs that are scheduled for the current month. You can move between months to see more scheduled jobs.
View the Summary of Scheduled Jobs
When you click on a date in the calendar, you see a summary of the job. The summary displays the frequency of the job, the type of job, and if the job is activated or deactivated. You can click Preview to see more details about the job, or click Deactivate All Recurrences to deactivate the job. To edit the job, click the Edit link.
View a Report of Jobs
View reclamation and rightsizing reports. The reclamation report displays graphical and numerical data on the total cost saving, CPUs reclaimed, memory reclaimed and storage reclaimed for different time periods.
The rightsizing reports displays graphical and numerical data on the CPUs downsized, memory downsized, CPU oversized, and memory upsized for different time periods.
View Job History
You can also view the history of configured jobs which have run. Click the History tab above the calendar to see the job name, and job details in a tabular format. Use the search to search for a Job or VM. Click the drop-down in the search box to perform an advanced search.
The job history page only displays the status of jobs. For detailed information about the task, go to Administration > Recent Tasks. Failed recurring jobs are triggered during the next run.
If VM Power Off is not allowed, the action fails and is indicate as such in the logs.
View Configured Jobs
The Jobs tab is where you see a list of configured jobs. For each job, clicking the ellipses icon brings up a menu from where you can edit, delete, clone or deactivate the job. If a job that you created is not visible in the list, search for it by entering the name in the search box. Alternatively, you can check by the job status by clicking the drop-down in the search box for advanced search options.

Prerequisites to Run Actions

Actions are run through VMware tools. vCenter privileges required to run each actions is documented in topic, Privileges Required for Configuring a vCenter Adapter Instance. Automation Central calls vCenter APIs with the credentials supplied to the vCenter adapter in VMware Aria Operations.

Automation Central is available for users who have the advanced license and above. You must have the necessary permission to schedule and manage jobs in the Automation Central page which you can access from the left menu. An administrator can manage these permissions in Administration > Access Control > Roles. Make sure that the Manage Job Schedules permission is selected in the Permissions section of the screen. This is available when you expand the Automation Central permission.

To schedule a job of a specific type, you must have permission to run the corresponding action defined under Environment > Actions. To view permissions assigned to the users and roles, navigate to Administration > Access Control.

Operational Actions must be enabled in the vCenter cloud adapter instance to run actions from Automation Central.

To use alternate user credentials for actions, see the topic, Configure a vCenter Server Cloud Account in VMware Aria Operations.

Troubleshooting Automation Jobs

To see the logs for scheduled jobs, go to Administration > Support Logs > Others and look for the following logs:
  • actionScheduler-.log
  • actions-data-.log

Or, go to Administration > Support Logs > Analytics and search for action execution in analytics-.log.