Sample workflow - Automatically adding a host to an external VMWare VCenter

This example shows how to create a custom workflow in order to add a host to a vmware vcenter system.

We will be using the CLI for this and some familiarity with it is required. Please follow Using the CLI guide to setup the CLI.

Warning

Tested using VMWare vCenter 6.7.0 and might not work with future versions of the API

Documentation for vCenter REST API is available here. We’re calling host create.

Creating a Task for enroll into vCenter

  1. Create a variable for the host of the vcenter

echo "https://172.17.108.75/" | metalcloud-cli variable create --name vcenter --pipe

  1. Create a secret for the credentials

echo "Basic YWRtaW5pc3RyYXRvckB2c3BoZXJlLmxvY2FsOkRlbGxSMGNrcyE=" | metalcloud-cli secret create --name vcenter-creds --pipe

  1. Create a stage definition to login

metalcloud-cli stage-definition create --label "vcenter-login" --title "vcenter-login" --type "HTTPRequest" --http-request-method GET --http_request_url='{{vcenter}}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session' --vars "vcenter"

  1. Create a stage definition to add the host to the vmware. Notice the IP obtained from the context {{vmware_ipv4_address_0_0}}

echo '{{vmware_ipv4_address_0_0}}' | ./metalcloud-cli stage-definition create --label "vcenter-host-add" --title "vcenter-host-add" --type "HTTPRequest" --http-request-method GET --http-request-url='{{vcenter}}/rest/vcenter/host' --http-request-header-authorization '{{vcenter_creds}}' --vars "vcenter,vcenter_creds,vmware_ipv4_0" --http-request-body-from-pipe

Create a workflow

$ metalcloud-cli workflow create --label "vmware" --title "Add host to vCenter" --usage infrastructure

Add stages to workflow

$ metalcloud-cli stage-definition add-to-workflow --id vcenter-login --workflow vmware --runlevel 1
$ metalcloud-cli stage-definition add-to-workflow --id 'vcenter-host-add' --workflow vmware --runlevel 2

Verify the stages

metalcloud-cli workflow list --id wmware
Stage Definitions:
+-------+---------------+------------------+-------------+----------+---------------------+
| ID    | INFRASTRUCTRE | STAGE            | TYPE        | RUNLEVEL | OUTPUT              |
+-------+---------------+------------------+-------------+----------+---------------------+
| 816   | vmware        | vcenter-login    | post_deploy | 1        |                     |
| 818   | vmware        | vcenter-host-add | post_deploy | 2        |                     |
+-------+---------------+------------------+-------------+----------+---------------------+
Total: 2

Add workflow to infrastructure

We add the workflow to the infrastructure using a reference stage definition which instructs the system to call a workflow.

metalcloud-cli stage-definition create --title "ref VMWARE" --label refvmware --type WorkflowReference --workflow add-host-to-vcenter

Deploy infrastructure

metalcloud-cli infrastructure deploy --id vmware --autoconfirm