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

Role of vRealize Orchestrator with the vRealize Automation plug-in

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

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

Installing the vRealize Automation plug-in

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

The following table provides more information about each scenario.
vRealize Orchestrator deployment vRealize Automation version Out of the box plug-in availability What to do
Embedded vRealize Automation 8.11.x Yes
  1. Configure vRealize Automation hosts.
  2. Start building your infrastructure.

External

 vRealize Automation 8.11.x No
  1. Download the plug-in from the VMware Marketplace.
  2. Install the plug-in on your vRealize Orchestrator instance.
Cloud extensibility proxy vRealize Automation Cloud No
  1. Verify that you have a vRealize Orchestrator integration in Cloud Assembly. See Configure a vRealize Orchestrator integration in Cloud Assembly.
  2. Download the plug-in from the VMware Marketplace.
  3. Install the plug-in on your cloud-enabled vRealize Orchestrator.

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

Using the default vRealize Automation plug-in workflows and actions

The vRealize 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 > vRealize Automation 8.x and Cloud Services in the vRealize 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 vRealize Automation plug-in inventory

The vRealize 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 > vRealize Automation and Cloud Services in the vRealize Orchestrator Client.

Accessing the vRealize Automation plug-in API

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

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

For up-to-date vRealize Automation API documentation, see the vRealize Automation 8.11 API Programming Guide.

For vRealize Orchestrator sample workflows that leverage the vRealize Automation plug-in REST client for extensibility migration, see vRealize Automation 8.7 Extensibility Migration Guide Samples.