With vRealize Automation you have the ability to onboard virtual machines into Cloud Assembly & Service Broker. In my use case here, we used VMware HCX to migrate VMs from the old platform over to the new VCF platform, and since we are using vRealize as the end user interface for the new cloud, we want to be able to allow users to access "legacy" VMs from the Service Broker console. By using this method, the tenant users can then manage their VMs directly from vRA without the need to go into vCenter.
One of the major issues I found with this is that until vRA 8.4 there was no practical way to remove the onboarded VMs without deleting them out of vCenter. This of course is a major concern, especially if these are production VMs. There`s a possibility that you added multiple VMs to a single deployment, or to an incorrect project and now you want to re-onboard them into the system.
Starting with vRA 8.4, you can remove onboarded virtual machines directly in Cloud Assembly or Service Broker.
PLEASE INSURE THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN BACKUPS OF ALL VMs THAT YOU PLAN ON ONBOARDING INTO THE SYSTEM BEFORE PERFORMING THE OPERATIONS BELOW.
To onboard a VM into vRA, do the following:
Step 1: In Cloud Assembly, go to Infrastructure > Onboarding > Select the Onboarding Plan > Machines > Add Machines
Step 2: Select the VM which you wish to add, then select Next.
Step 3: Create Plan Deployment. One thing to note here is that if you select multiple VMs and add them to the same deployment, it will add them all under one section in Deployments. We want to be able to have 1 entry for each VM added. So create a plan deployment for each VM.
Step 4: Select the VM and then click Run.
You will see the VM deployed under Deployments
One bug in this feature is that once the VM has been onboarded, the name appears as a deployment ID and not the "real" VM name. This needs to be changed manually. To do this, click the deployment name and the pencil button and then add the correct VM name, then press the green check mark to save.
At this point the VM has been onboarded into vRA. Your users can not connect the console and perform operations via the Service Broker portal.
To remove an onboarded VM from vRA, do the following:
Step 1: In Cloud Assembly, go to Infrastructure > Onboarding > Select the Onboarding Plan > Machines > Select the machine to be removed by checking the box by the name and then press remove.
This method will safely remove the VM from the vRA system, without deleting it from vCenter.
DO NOT remove the VM by selecting the DELETE option from the deployments view. This will delete the VM from vCenter.
