Automation Central is where you can create recurring jobs to automate basic operational and optimization actions. It provides a lightweight framework around which users can schedule jobs.
The Automation Central Jobs are mapped to Actions, which are calls to the vCenter API making the configured requests.
You can customize jobs so that they only run based certain on parameters. Once you set up recurring jobs, you can track and obtain reports on them.
Below is a list of tasks you can automate using the vROPs Automation Central:
Pre-requisites:
- 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.
- To schedule a job of a specific type, you must have permission to run the corresponding action defined.
- Operational Actions must be enabled in the vCenter cloud adapter instance to run actions from Automation Central.
- Actions are run through VMware tools. vCenter privileges required to run each actions.
Configuration:
In this post, we will see how you can set up a recurring job to delete old snapshots past 7 days using vROPs Automation Central.
To configure the same, login into you vROPs UI and select Automation Central from the left pane.
Here, you will see different tabs for Schedule, Report, History and Jobs.
The Schedule tab displays a calendar, which shows a list of scheduled jobs for each day of the month.
The Report tab shows Reclamation and Rightsizing report. It’s a helpful to see just how much money and how many resources you can save by using Automation Central.
History will show you what Jobs have been run, the Action they took, Status, Start Time and more. Job status can also be found in Administration – History – Recent Tasks
The Jobs tab shows all the jobs, their name, the actions they are taking, status, and more. It also allows you to Edit, Delete, Cone, or Disable the Job.
Here since we are going to create a new job, click on Add Job
Give a Name and Description for the Automated Job.
Select the Action you want to perform, in this case, we will select the Delete old Snapshots action and set the snapshot age to 7 days. You can customize this as per your requirements.
Click Next
Select the Automation Scope i.e. where you want to run this action. You can select an entire vcenter server or drill down further to select a particular cluster resource.
You can also add a filter criteria to limit the resources where you want to run this automated job.
Click Next
Setup the schedule for the Job. Here you will define a Start Date, Start Time, and Recurrence interval. You can also configure email notifications.
Once done, click Create and your new Job will show on the Schedule.
If you have configured email notifications in the schedule tab, you will receive a pre-task notification stating that vROPs is going to run an scheduled automation task.
That completes our post on the vROPs Automation Central and how to use it to configure Automated jobs for your environment.
Happy Learning !
Virtual Arkade 