Using automation with Virtual Machine Clouds

Applies To: Windows Azure Pack

You can use automation in Windows Azure Pack to orchestrate and integrate best-practice tasks to drive down the cost of datacenter operations, while improving the reliability of IT processes. You can integrate Service Management Automation with VM Clouds to trigger runbooks every time a specific event occurred in the VM Clouds infrastructure. The topic Register Service Management Automation for Virtual Machine Clouds provides instructions on how to associate VM Clouds with Service Management Automation. This topic provides instructions on how to associate Service Management Automation runbooks with events occurring in the context of VM Clouds. If you want to understand how VM Clouds integrates with Service Management Automation at an architectural level, see How is Service Provider Foundation associated with Service Management Automation?

To associate runbooks with events in VM Clouds

1. From the management portal for administrators, click the VM Clouds tab.

2. From the VM Clouds tab, click the Automation view.

3. From the Automation view, from the command bar, click Add, and specify the following:

   1. For Action Category, select a VM Clouds object, an action on which triggers a Runbook. For the list of objects and the descriptions, see Objects that can be associated with runbooks.

   2. For the Action, select the action that must occur on the selected object for a Runbook to be triggered. Depending on the action category that you selected, the list of actions is populated with the available actions.

   3. For Runbook, select the Runbook that is triggered every time the specified action occurs on the selected object.

      Note

      For a Runbook to be available in this drop-down, it must include the “SPF” tag. For instructions on how to tag Runbooks, see Editing Runbook Properties. If you are using a non-Roman alphabet keyboard, repeat the following steps three times to include the “SPF” tag:

      1. Press and hold the ALT key.

      2. Press the + key on the number pad.

      3. Type the Unicode value 0053 for the letter S.

      4. Release the ALT key.

      5. Repeat these steps two more times by typing values 0050 (for P) and 0046 (for F).

   4. Select the Enable checkbox to enable the association between the object, the action, and the Runbook. This check box can be particularly useful in scenarios where you want the association between the runbooks and events in VM Clouds to come into effect at a later date or time.

   5. Click the check mark to save your changes.

Objects that can be associated with runbooks

In the management portal, when you link an action with a runbook on the Automation tab in Virtual Machine Clouds you must choose the following:

• An Action Category, such as an Administrator or Tenant, and can also include all resource providers such as usage and notifications.

• Depending on the category you selected, select the Action. This selects the object whose actions, such as being deleted or updated, can be ascertained and associated with a runbook.

• A Runbook to associate with the action.

The following sections list the objects and the CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) operations that trigger actions when accessed by web service calls using HTTPS, or when the tenant or administrator changes the state of an object using the management portal for administrators, management portal for tenants, or System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager. For more information on the URLs that access these objects, see Service Management API and Service Provider Foundation URLs.

Subscription object

The subscription object represents a subscription that is created every time a tenant subscribes to a plan. It is triggered by the following actions:

• CRUD actions: Create, Update, Delete

• State actions: Activate, Suspend

spfVMM.MicrosoftCompute objects

The following table describes the objects accessed with the spfVMM.MicrosoftCompute prefix, and the operations that trigger an action on these objects.

spfAdmin objects

The following table describes the objects accessed with the spfAdmin prefix, and the operations that trigger an action on these objects.

spfVMM objects

The following table describes the objects accessed with the spfVMM prefix, and the operations that trigger an action.

See Also

Administer Virtual Machine Clouds