As we talk about the automation in VM provisioning , One of the crucial step is to get the IP address from external source.

Recently I was working on used case where we want to provide the IP addresses at the time of submitting the provisioning.

There are multiple ways to do it in VRA and VRO . I am using VRA ABX Python action to achieve it.

Used Case: I want to submit more than one machine at time and provide the IP addresses at same time. For my example I am using 2 Machines here.

Subscription Used:

• Compute Allocation
• Network Configure

First Lets take a look at Blueprint’s Yaml where we define all custom properties.

formatVersion: 1
inputs:
  firstVM:
    type: string
    title: NewVMName1
  SecondVM:
    type: string
    title: NewVMName2
  VM1IP:
    type: string
    title: VM-1-IP
  VM2IP:
    title: VM-2-IP
    type: string
resources:
  vSphere_Machine:
    type: Cloud.Machine
    properties:
      firstVM: '${input.firstVM}'
      SecondVM: '${input.SecondVM}'
      VM1IP: '${input.VM1IP}'
      VM2IP: '${input.VM2IP}'
      abxaction: 'yes'
      count: 2
      image: VMwareCode-CentOS
      flavor: VMwareCode-small
      networks:
        - network: '${resource.vSphere_Network.id}'
          assignment: static
  vSphere_Network:
    type: Cloud.vSphere.Network
    properties:
      networkType: existing
      constraints:
        - tag: 'vsphere:network'

• As we see above , I am using 4 Inputs as 2 VM names and 2 IP addresses in line 19-22
• Line 23 we will use for condition in subscription
• Also I am using static assignment in line 28-29
• Line 35 is to Target the Network Profile where I have defined the Range

Once we are done with Blueprint, that is how it will look like when we click on Deploy

Since I am changing the name of VM and assigning the IP , I would need 2 ABX action
Below is the action is to change the VM Name as per Input

def handler(context, inputs):
    firstVM = inputs['customProperties']['firstVM']
    secondVM = inputs['customProperties']['SecondVM']
    returnobj = inputs
    returnobj['resourceNames'][0] = firstVM
    returnobj['resourceNames'][1] = secondVM
    return returnobj

Here is the action for Assigning the IP addresses to correspond VMs.

def handler(context, inputs):
    firstVMIP = inputs['customProperties']['VM1IP']
    SecondVMIP = inputs['customProperties']['VM2IP']
    outputs = {}
    addresses = [[]]
    outputs["addresses"] = addresses
    outputs["addresses"][0]=[str(firstVMIP)]
    outputs["addresses"].append([SecondVMIP])
    return outputs

If you have followed the article without missing any step, means you are done Python and Yaml code stuff.
Now all is left is Creation of the subscription If already not exist and Map to above created ABX python action.

To create the new Subscription follow below
Click on Cloud Assembly => Click Extensibility => Subscription = > Click New Subscription

Provide Name, enable Subscription and on Event Topic Choose Compute Allocation

If you noticed in YAML line number 23 I have specified the condition abxaction: yes

      abxaction: 'yes'

In subscription we are using that as condition to run and in action/workflow choose abx and above created action.

Click Save and we are done with Rename subscription.

Click New subscription once again and this time we will choose Network Configure subscription and network action , Rest all settings will be same.

so we have done all the coding and configuration , Now it is time to submit the VM provisioning request .

As we see the name as we submitted during provisioning, lets check the IP of each .

Both VMs got renamed and static IP which we entered has been applied to VMs.

Disclaimer: Indexing issue for multi Dimensional array has been fixed in 8.4.1, which was getting interchanged in 8.3 and 8.4