Templating and Property Toolkit

To learn more, refer to Templating guide and Property Toolkit features.

Introduction

The OneFuse Property Toolkit (PTK) is the Swiss army knife of the OneFuse Platform.

PTK can be used to simplify configurations, define business logic as configuration, build simple logic or tackle the most complex problems. At face value, the PTK is meta-data that can be called upon offering simple name value pairs that can be used as a reference for decision making. In its most powerful form, it can contain logic, decision trees, platform abstractions, and much more.

Feature highlights

• Minimize automation inputs by presenting simple meaningful inputs, and leveraging policy-driven decisioning
• Reduce blueprint and configuration sprawl with dynamic blueprints and configurations
• Reduce custom code/technical debt in the areas of configurations and business logic
• Cross-platform/tool standardization
• Use OneFuse Property Sets to drive property assignment and rendering
  • Supports nested Property Sets
• Supports OneFuse Template Engine for both key:value pair.
• Supports ordering sets/groupings of properties by alphabetizing the after the Property Key prefix.

Resources

• OneFuse Property Sets for Property Toolkit features
• OneFuse Property Sets for Upstream Providers

Prerequisites

1. Configure OneFuse Property Set(s) and OneFuse Module Policies.
2. Run OneFuse Configuration per vRA Tenant.
3. Review the OneFuse Modules overview for vRealize Automation 7.6.
4. Create a new vRA Blueprint (if none exist) or determine which existing Blueprint(s) will utilize this OneFuse Module.
   • Resource: Designing Machine Blueprints

Configure the Blueprint

1. Know the name of the OneFuse Endpoint created via OneFuse Configuration.
2. Determine which OneFuse Property Sets are needed for this Blueprint.
3. Determine which vRA Properties are needed for this Blueprint.
4. Update the Blueprint to add in necessary vRA Properties to influence other vRA Properties and OneFuse Policies.
5. Deploy the Blueprint to provision a vRA Deployment with dynamic configurations.

Update the Blueprint

1. Log in to the vRA Tenant
2. Select the Design tab from the top menu bar
3. Select the Blueprints tab from the left menu
4. Edit the Blueprint and perform the below:

Add in necessary vRA Properties

The following vRA Properties need to be added to the Blueprint’s Properties > Custom Properties section under the Resource(s) of interest.

1. Trigger Property Toolkit:

Example vRA Custom Properties (in key: value pair format)

# OneFuse Property Toolkit - Simple Example

# -- Property Name
# <CustomID> is replaced with App, Env and 001Backup

# -- Property Value
# <OneFuse Endpoint Name>  is onefuse
# <OneFuse Property Set Name> is linux and prod
# <Property Name>  is Backup-VM
# <Property Value> is the provisioned resource hostname

OneFuse_PropertyToolkit: onefuse:true
OneFuse_SPS_App: linux
OneFuse_SPS_Env: prod
OneFuse_CreateProperties_001Backup: {"key":"Backup-VM", "value":"{{ OneFuse_VmNic0.hostname }}"}

2. Add in additional vRA Properties:

2a. Method to add in properties from a OneFuse Property Set:

2b. Method to dynamically add in vRA Properties:

Example vRA Custom Properties (in key: value pair format)

# Method A Example - Add in properties from OneFuse Property Set(s)
# !!Note: Starting in OneFuse v1.4, Static Property Sets was renamed to Property Sets.  Backwards compatibility exists.

# -- Property Name Format
# <CustomID> is App and Env

# -- Property Value Format
# <Property Set Names>: linux and prod
OneFuse_SPS_App: linux
OneFuse_SPS_Env: prod


# Method B Example - Create vRA Properties

# -- Property Name Format
# <CustomID> is 001Backup

# -- Property Value Format
# <Property Name>  is Backup-VM
# <Property Value> is the provisioned resource hostname
OneFuse_CreateProperties_001Backup: {"key":"Backup-VM", "value":"{{ OneFuse_VmNic0.hostname }}"}

CustomID

CustomID refers to a user specified text string to identify and can set an order of precedence for execution when calling multiple Policies for the OneFuse Module in the same vRA EBS State.

Replace <CustomID> variable with a unique custom identifier:

• Format is alphanumeric characters only A-Z, a-z, 0-9. No spaces, underscores, hyphens nor special characters.
• Must be unique across all EBS Execution Strings for the OneFuse Module on the specific VM for the Blueprint/Cloud Template.
• Is reusable either between different VM components of the Blueprint/Cloud Template canvas or between different Blueprints/Cloud Templates.

# OneFuse Property Toolkit - Simple Example

# -- Property Name
# <CustomID> is replaced with App, Env and 001Backup

# -- Property Value
# <OneFuse Endpoint Name>  is onefuse
# <OneFuse Property Set Name> is linux and prod
# <Property Name>  is Backup-VM
# <Property Value> is the provisioned resource hostname

OneFuse_PropertyToolkit: onefuse:true
OneFuse_SPS_App: linux
OneFuse_SPS_Env: prod
OneFuse_CreateProperties_001Backup: {"key":"Backup-VM", "value":"{{ OneFuse_VmNic0.hostname }}"}

Specify sorting with CustomID:

When executing multiple different OneFuse Module’s Policies in the same EBS State, prefix the <CustomID> with a numeric value (for example 001, 002, etc).

The <CustomID> is sorted prior to executing the OneFuse module’s policies.

# Example CustomID with sorting

001Apache
002WebApp
003BackupClient

Additional helpful vRA Properties

Purpose: Relate OneFuse Policy executions from different OneFuse Modules together with a Tracking ID.

Purpose: Reference a specific NIC’s values to get hostname, IP Address, etc.

Replace <#> with a number from 0 to 9, one for each NIC.

Replace <value> with an appropriate key: dnsSuffix, fqdn, gateway, hostname, ipAddress, macAddress, netmask, network, subnet, target

Examples:

• OneFuse_VmNic0.dnsSuffix
• OneFuse_VmNic0.fqdn
• OneFuse_VmNic0.hostname
• OneFuse_VmNic0.ipAddress
• OneFuse_VmNic0.target: when DNS Suffix is provided, will be the FQDN; otherwise, will be the hostname (without domain).

Custom property placement methods

Influence Custom Properties for Resources using different methods:

Learn more: Understanding Custom Properties Precedence

Compiled example vRA Custom Properties

Review example below of vRA Custom Properties (in key: value pair format) for this OneFuse Module.

# OneFuse Property Toolkit - Simple Example

# -- Property Name
# <CustomID> is replaced with App, Env and 001Backup

# -- Property Value
# <OneFuse Endpoint Name>  is onefuse
# <OneFuse Property Set Name> is linux and prod
# <Property Name>  is Backup-VM
# <Property Value> is the provisioned resource hostname

OneFuse_PropertyToolkit: onefuse:true
OneFuse_SPS_App: linux
OneFuse_SPS_Env: prod
OneFuse_CreateProperties_001Backup: {"key":"Backup-VM", "value":"{{ OneFuse_VmNic0.hostname }}"}

Provision

Deploy a Blueprint with OneFuse Property Sets configured and/or Create Properties dynamically. The resource will be dynamically created.

Outputs

The user specified vRA Properties will exist on the deployment.

vRA EBS

Troubleshooting

Troubleshoot in vRealize Orchestrator.

1. Log in to vRealize Orchestrator.
2. Turn on Verbose Logging and try again to see additional log messages in vRO Workflows:
   • Select Library > Workflows from the left menu
   • Go to: OneFuse > Property Toolkit > vRA7 to find corresponding workflow runs and view logs
   • Optionally, run the workflows in the Manual folder to manually test
3. Optionally, configure timeouts for EBS and/or Configure timeouts for OneFuse modules.

Additional resources:

• Review Troubleshooting in OneFuse
• Review VMware troubleshooting resources