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Self-Service Right Sizing with vRA and vROps

I recently did a PoC for a customer, to show how you could offer server right sizing through vRA using the capacity data of vROps. I really like blending these 2 products.

I am using vRA 7.6 and vROps 7.5 for this integration.

vROps holds a special place not just from the massive benefit it provided the business when I used to run large scale environments back when it was vCOps and before that CapIQ but was the topic of my first published book.
vRA and automation in general is real passion, So really happy when I get to combine the 2.

For those who who just want to look at the video and see it in action here you go.

The requirement I had here is to offer self-service right-sizing for CPU and Memory to deployed servers, what better way than to take advantage of the vRealize suite and use the right sizing data from vROps. There is to be 2 ways to achieve this, first is to enable through a day 2 action on a single resource, the second is to enable bulk resize based on business group.

Day 2 Action:
1) To add a day two action we need to create a custom resource mapping, to do this you need to have a workflow or action that takes in a properties input and output the vRO resource type you require.
The images below is what I am using, taking machine type and returning vRACAFE:CatalogResource

Finished Resource Mapping
Resource Mapping Properties
Action returning the vRO Type we require

2) Now we add a custom resource action which is just a vRO workflow but we attach it to the resource mapping we created earlier.

Resource Action

The vRO workflow used is nothing special it takes in name and other values which it then uses to call vROps and get the values at run time. The form has no selectable fields everything is being populated externally, but you do need an input matching the type matching the custom mapping..

Bellow is the image of the form when someone requests it on any vSphere VM in vRA. (You do need to entitle the user to this new action for it to be visible.

Selecting Day 2 Actions
Day 2 form, no editable fields all data is retrieved via external values
After submit seeing the workflow trigger the resizing

XaaS Item
3) That is the day 2 action sorted, but now the bulk resize. This is just an XaaS blueprint that used the relationship data from the vRA management pack for vROps to get the machines for the Business Group, then display them in an array for the ones that need rightsizing and the ones that dont.
I will share my workflows (link at the bottom) but be warned they are not something to dump into prod, I was prototyping and re using many flows and actions that I already had and its not very elegant.

To make the user experience faster I am caching the information in as JSON within vRO Resource Elements.

Below are the images of user requesting this catalog item.

Catalog Item to re-size
Select business group
Form listing machines that need right sizing and the ones that dont
Select the ones I want to resize in the left right box
Submitted
Actions in vCenter taking place

That’s it nice and simple, but would be amazing if this was OOTB, all the data and relationships is there. Here is the download


As mentioned before its a rush job but should give you an idea. Below There are some images of the rest Operations I used.
Enjoy!!!

5 Comments

  1. Ciro Iriarte
    Ciro Iriarte May 28, 2020

    Wondering how difficult would it be to replicate this in vRA 8.x

    • Scott Norris
      Scott Norris June 8, 2020

      Very easy, little would need to change now 8.1 allows custom day 2 actions

  2. Eric Cano
    Eric Cano October 23, 2020

    Nice solution!, thanks for share!

    now we have to adapt this for vRA 8.2 , its growing to fast, and there is so many changes to take into acount

  3. Ridwaan
    Ridwaan March 5, 2021

    Hello Scott

    Can you share the procedure to set up the right sizing via VRA

  4. Antonio
    Antonio November 10, 2022

    Hello Scott

    Do you have the instructions to implement this solution

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