All available Rubrik SLA domain names dynamically populated in standard vRA IaaS Request Forms

Anyone familiar with Rubrik? Rubrik Cloud Data Management delivers automated backup, instant recovery, offsite replication, and data archival in a simple, scale out platform built for hybrid cloud. For more information go to https://www.rubrik.com/product/overview/

My current customer is using Rubrik as a backup solution for their vSphere managed virtual machines. They are also using vRealize Automation 7.x as their preferred private cloud solution.

With vRA 7 they automated the deployment of their Windows and Linux virtual servers. As part of their deployment process, they needed an automated integration with Rubrik. They asked me to dynamically populate a drop-down list on a vRA 7 request form with all available SLA domain names from their Rubrik environment. These SLA domain names must be based on actual “live” information. One of the good things about Rubrik, is that it ships with a REST API.  This blog reveals how I full-filled my customer use case.

  1. To start the integration with Rubrik into vRealize Automation, I downloaded the latest version of vRealize Orchestrator package for Rubrik. This package is compatible for Rubrik v3.0 API calls. You can download this package from the following location: https://github.com/rubrikinc/vRO-Workflow/releases/tag/3.0.0
  2. Now import this vRO package into your vRO environment. It contains the following workflows and actions, a configuration element and a rubrik logo.
  3. To configure the Rubrik integration into vRealize Orchestrator, you have to run the vRO workflow “Rubrik Add Cluster Instance”. This will add a the Rubrik appliance as a REST Host to the vRO Inventory section and will also store the required Rubrik information in a vRO configuration element.
  4. To address my customer requirements, I needed to create a vRO action that combined a couple of the Rubrik library actions including a slightly modified Rubrik library action. On top of this I needed to remove any input requirements for these vRO actions to simplify the integration into vRealize Automation. The populated vRO configuration element with all the required Rubrik information was very helpful for this challenge.
  5. I created a copy of the Rubrik Library action “rubrikGetSLAID” and named it “rubrikGetAllSLA”. Inside the “rubrikGetAllSLA” action, I stored the values of the required Rubrik configuration element attributes into local variables to feed the inputs of the called out Rubrik Library actions “rubrikGetToken” and “base64Encode_1”. As a result of this, I was able to run the modified Rubrik Library action “rubrikGetSLAID” which returns an array of strings containing the available Rubrik SLA domain names.
  6. The contents of the vRO action “rubrikGetAllSLA” is shown below.
  7. The result of the vRO action “rubrikGetAllSLA” is shown below.
  8. To dynamically populate a drop-down list in a vRA 7 standard IaaS request form with all available Rubrik SLA domain names, I needed to create a custom property with the name “Vm.RubrikSLADomain” on the standard IaaS blueprints for the Windows and Linux deployments. Secondly I needed to create a vRA property definition based on an external value, which is in fact the vRO action that I created before. Below is my example of this vRA property definition.
  9. Finally, when I request a new virtual machine with vRealize Automation 7.x, it looks like the screenshot below. (The below example is based on a deployment for a Linux virtual machine).
  10. Enjoy using vRA, vRO and Rubrik 😉

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