Create global custom naming for deployed resources in Cloud Assembly

As a cloud or project administrator, you have a prescribed naming convention for resources in your environment, and you want the deployed resource to follow those conventions without user interaction. You can create global naming templates for some or all deployments in Cloud Assembly.

You can start by creating project-level custom names or organization-level names. Project-level custom names take precedence over organization-level names. This example starts with a simple organization custom name and then adds project-level naming.

Caution: If you have cloud templates or are using the API where you deploy 2000 or more resources at the same time per project, and where a custom name if applied, you might encounter a Retries exhausted error during deployment on some of those resources. If this scenario is common, you should not apply the new custom name to the projects or organizations where this occurs. Instead, you should use the default system naming, not the custom naming option.

What to do first

• Verify that you are not
• To demonstrate the custom naming capability, these use cases need two projects. One is name Sales and one is named Marketing. For more information about creating projects, see How do I add a project for my Cloud Assembly development team.
• As you make choices about organization and project templates, ensure that you understand which naming conventions take precedence. See Resource naming precedence at deployment time.
• As you create a template using the template format, the possible properties are provided. For more information, see Working with template formats.

Create an organization-level custom template

When you want a default custom name template for deployments that do not have project-level templates, create templates that are organizational in scope.

1. Select Infrastructure > Administration > Custom Names and click New Custom Name.
2. Enter a Name.

   This example uses Prefix and Timestamp for Org.

3. Select Organization as the Scope.
4. Click New Naming Template and configure the following options.

   Option	Sample Value
   Resource type	Machine
   Template format	mcm-${timestamp}-${######}
   Starting counter value	1
   Increment step	1 With this configuration, all the deployments across all the projects will increment from this starting point. In this example, where the starting counter is 1 and the increment is 1, the first deployment is numbered as 2. I you need the deployment to start at 1, then set the starting counter to zero and the increment step to 1.

5. Click Add.
6. Continue adding templates for other resource types using the following examples.

   Resource Type Name	Naming Template Format
   Machine	mcm-${timestamp}-${##}
   Network	ntw-${timestamp}-${##}
   Storage	stg-${timestamp}-${##}
   Load Balancer	ldb-${timestamp}-${##}
   Resource Group	rsg-${timestamp}-${##}
   Gateway	gtw-${timestamp}-${##}
   NAT	nat-${timestamp}-${##}
   Security Group	scg-${timestamp}-${##}

7. Click Create.
8. Test the name template by deploying templates that include the defined resource types.
   
   

Create a project-level custom template with advanced pattern matching

You can create a single custom name template that you can assign to different projects. You use the advanced option to set different numbering starting points for different projects.

This example uses the machine resource.

1. Select Infrastructure > Administration > Custom Names and click New Custom Name.
2. Enter a Name.

   This example uses Project Name with Advanced Numbering.

3. Select Project as the Scope.
4. Click New Naming Template and configure the following options.

   Option	Sample Value
   Resource type	Machine
   Template format	${project.name}-${######}
   Starting counter value	1
   Increment step	1 With this configuration, all the deployments across all the projects will increment from this starting point. In this example, where the starting counter is 1 and the increment is 1, the first deployment is numbered as 2. I you need the deployment to start at 1, then set the starting counter to zero and the increment step to 1.

5. To add more refinement to the default organization naming template, click Advanced and click Add Matching Pattern.

   You can set different naming patterns to start the counter at different numbers or reset the number to 1 for each pattern. For example, the Sales project numbering starts at 100 and the Marketing project numbering starts at 200.

   1. Enter the pattern for the sales project.

      Option	Sample Value
      Pattern text	Sales-
      Starting counter value	100

   2. Enter the pattern for the marketing project.

      Option	Sample Value
      Pattern text	Marketing-
      Starting counter value	200

6. Click Add.
7. Continue adding templates for other resource types, as needed.
8. Click Assign Projects and add the Sales and Marketing projects.
9. Click Create.
10. Test the name template by first deploying a cloud template that is in the Sales project, and then one in the Marketing project.
    
    

Example of a custom name with custom properties and project-specific values

In addition to the properties provided in the template format autofill options, you can use custom properties. To use custom properties in a custom name, you must define them in a property group.

A custom property value in the cloud template take precedence over the same property value in the custom name.

This example uses costCenter as the property and SalesCost as the value for the Sales project and MktCost as the value for the Marketing project.

1. Create a property group named costingPG.
   1. Select Infrastructure > Design > Property Groups and click New Property Group.
   2. Click Input Values.
   3. Enter the Name costingPG.
   4. For the Scope, select Available for any project.
   5. Click New Property configure the following values and enter the name costCenter.

      Options	Sample Values
      Name	costCenter
      Type	String
      Default value	research

   6. Click Create.
   7. Click Create to save the new property group.
2. Configure custom properties for the Sales project and the Marketing project.

   These steps illustrate the process for the Sales project. You can repeat the steps and use the marketing project values.

   • Sales property name: costingPG.costCenter. Value: SalesCost.
   • Marketing property name: costingPG.costCenter. Value: MktCost.
   1. Select Infrastructure > Administration > Projects and open the Sales project.
   2. Click the Provisioning tab and locate the Custom Properties section.
   3. Enter costingPG.costCenter as the property name and SalesCost and the value.
      
      
   4. Click Save.
   5. Repeat the process in the Marketing project using MktCost and the property value.
3. Create a project-level custom name.

   This example uses the same projects that the advanced example users. You can assign custom names to only one project at a time. To test the results of this example, you can either apply the custom name to new projects or remove the Sales and Marketing projects from the Project Name with Advanced Numbering example.

   This example assumes that you have not yet assigned the Sales and Marketing projects.

   1. Select Infrastructure > Administration > Custom Names and click New Custom Name.
   2. Enter Project Name and costingPG as the Name.
   3. Select Project as the Scope.
   4. Click New Naming Template and configure the following options.

      Table 1.

      Options	Descriptions
      Resource Type	Machine
      Template format	${project.name}-{costingPG.costCenter}-${######}
      Starting counter value	1
      Increment step	1

   5. Click Add.
   6. Click Assign Projects and add the Sales and Marketing projects.
   7. Click Create.
4. Test the name template by first deploying a cloud template that is in the Sales project, and then one in the Marketing project.

   Figure 1. Sales project resource name

   
   
   

   Figure 2. Marketing project resource name

   
   
   

Resource naming precedence at deployment time

Based on how you configure custom naming, the names are applied to the deployed resources based on the following rules.

A common practice is to define a general organization-level naming template and then to create one or more project-level templates, depending one your project management needs.

Custom Naming Scenario	Precedence
No custom names	The system creates the deployment resource names for all the deployment components.
Organization-level name	Applies the custom naming property values and strings to all the deployments. If the deploying project has a project-level custom name, the organization-level name is overridden. If an organization-level custom name is not defined, the project-level name is used for assigned projects. If neither an organization-level nor a project-level custom name is defined, the system creates the resource names.
Project-level names	Applies the project-level custom naming property values and strings to all assigned projects. If an organization-level name exists, the project-level name takes precedence over the organization name. If an organization-level custom name is not defined, the project-level name is used for assigned projects. If neither an organization-level nor a project-level custom name is defined, the system creates the resource names.

Working with template formats

When defining your template format, you can use strings and properties. The primary advantage of using properties is that you can use the same properties as the format for multiple projects, but the name is derived from the value properties, which can vary by project, cloud template, platform, and other properties.

The template format properties include the provided properties, discussed here, and any custom properties that you defined in the Design > Property Groups.

• Valid characters
  • Spaces are not allowed.
  • For readability, you can use special characters to separate properties. The allowed characters are _ (underscore) and - (dash).
• Provided properties

  Table 2. Provided Properties

  Properties	Description
  endpoint	Cloud account information, such as description, enter (AWS), or the name. Endpoint only applies to machines. Examples ${endpoint.desc} ${endpoint.endpointType} ${endpoint.name}
  project	Project information. Example ${project.desc} ${project.name}
  resource	Includes the resource name from the cloud template, custom properties that are in the cloud template or the project. Examples ${resource.image} ${resource.siteCode}
  timestamp	Date and time of the deployment. The numeric value is yyyy mm dd hh mm ss, but without the spaces. For example, 20210825120345. Example ${timestamp}
  user	Example ${user}
  username	Example ${userName}
  ######	Number property. The maximum length is 19 digits. If you use two digits, ##, the maximum number before the numbering starts over is 99. If you use ###, the numbering restarts after 999. Example ${####}.
  Custom property	Custom properties must be part of property group. The property in the custom name includes the property group name and the property. Example ${propertygroup.property}

Working with the counter

In a single node instance of vRealize Automation Cloud, the counter increments based on the values that you define in your custom naming templates and as they are applied to the target organization and projects.

In a multi node environment, the counter attempts of increment based on the values in the template. If it encounters a contention, application of the number is attempted three time. It is possible that a request could fail after the third attempt to resolve the contention. In this case, you might see a gap in the numbering.

You might also encounter gaps in the numbering for other reasons. For example, you deploy three virtual machines. The second machine fails during provisioning. The counters for the deployed virtual machines are vm-01 and vm-03, with vm-02 missing.

If you do not use the custom naming, preferring to rely on the default naming strategy, the pools of counter values are reserved to the nodes as follows:

• Node 1: 1-300
• Node 2: 301-600
• Node 3: 601-900

This means that in a multi node environment, the number can appear to be unexpected. The number depends on which node processes the request.

List of resource types to which you can apply custom names

You can create a custom name for only one resource type or for all the resource types. Only the resource types with custom names use the template. All other resources use the default template.

For example, if you create a project-level custom name for only your machines and you have organization-level names for all the other resource types, the machine resource takes the project name and all the other resources use the organization names.

Table 3. Sample list of resources

Custom naming resource types	Deployment resource types
Machines	Cloud.Machine Cloud.vSphere.Machine Cloud.AWS.EC2.Instance Cloud.GCP.Machine Cloud.Azure.Machine
Networks	Cloud.Network Cloud.vSphere.Network Cloud.NSX.Network
Storage	Cloud.Volume Cloud.vSphere.Disk Cloud.AWS.Volume Cloud.GCP.Disk Cloud.Azure.Disk
Load balancers	Cloud.LoadBalancer Cloud.NSX.LoadBalancer
Resource Groups	Cloud.Azure.ResourceGroup
Gateways	Cloud.NSX.Gateway
NAT	Cloud.NSX.NAT
Security groups	Cloud.SecurityGroup

Deleting custom name templates

Deleting a template does not affect currently deployed resource naming. However, you must not delete a custom name template until you verify the impact on all the assigned projects.

You can remove a project from a naming template. The template continues to work for the other projects.

Deleting projects with custom names

If a project has a custom naming template applied, you must first remove the project from the template before you can delete the project.