vRealize Automation Explained

  First a brief high level view of typical vRA provisioning process When a catalog item request is submitted VRA does an initial validation of the request. Any approvals are enforced and a reservation check is performed against the IaaS piece to ensure there is a reservation available to satisfy the requested resources. Once all these are performed the request gets passed by vRA to the IaaS piece. The ContextId can be used to track the request between components, this will be covered in greater detail further on.             To validate if the IaaS component ever receives the request you can check the repository logfile on the iaas Web servers: Program Files (x86)\VMware\vCAC\Server\Model Manager Web\logs\ Repository.log Here you will find the ProvisionAllocatedMachineRequest tags and between these the specification of the request will be outlined including any custom properties.  [UTC:2019-04-22 10:32:14 Local:2019-04-22 11:32] [Trace]: [sub-thread-Id="

Note this article covers only vRA 7.x, for vRA 8.x be sure to check out vRA 8 related articles: vRA 8.x basics vRA 8.x health check failing vRA 8.x Tutorial A common issue can be vRealize Automation appliance services not registering. This issue is typically noticed after a reboot or unplanned service outtage. The following article is intended to provide a walkthrough of troubleshooting such a scenario. Unfortunately the vRA catalina.out logfile located under /var/log/vmware/vcac can be quite cryptic in these scenario's and often just reports generic http response response codes. The service registry can be checked under the vami interface in vRA Settings -> Services tab and also via the component registry URL: https://vRAappliance/component-registry/ services / status / current Based on my experience the main offenders for vRA appliance service registry issues are as follows: Disk space. RabbitMQ  - internal messaging broker service leveraged by vRA. vIDM 

IaaS refers to the collection components installed on the Windows servers in a vRealize Automation environment. This article will focus specifically on the troubleshooting methodology applied when this IaaS service is not registering on the vRA appliances, I intend to create a separate post at a later date to focus solely on the purpose of each individual IaaS component. See vRA Management agents explained article for further explanation specifically for IaaS Management Agent components. The Problem The IaaS service registry status can be viewed in the Services tab of the VAMI interface or at the vRA appliance component service registry health check URL. https://vRA:5480 https://vRA/ component-registry/services/status/ current   Typically, IaaS service registry issues will be noticed here first. Other common symptoms of IaaS service registry issues include problems accessing the Infrastructure tab or general provisioning/data collection failures.