Impact of Moving VMs Between vCenter Folders on Aria Automation Functionality

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Moving the VMs from  the original folder to new created folder in vCenter would impact any aria automation functionality related to the VM.

Environment

Aria Automation 8.18.1

Cause

While moving a virtual machine is moved from one inventory folder to another within vCenter Server (e.g., from it-cloud to it-cloud/NewIt-cloud). 
The vCenter inventory accurately reflects the new location. However, in the section of custom properties associated with a deployment in Aria Automation are often populated at the time of the initial deployment or resource onboarding and the new folderName does not reflect in custom property within the Aria Automation deployment, that's remains the initially recorded value of it-cloud.

The folderName custom property in your Aria Automation deployment likely captured the VM's folder location at the moment the VM was deployed or discovered and added to Aria Automation's managed inventory. These custom properties are essentially static metadata recorded with the deployment and do not automatically update in real-time if the underlying vCenter inventory object's placement changes post-deployment.

 

Resolution

Recommendation to not to move the VMs to a different folder since it is not a supported functionality.:

1. Moving VM Is not supported as of now and discrepancy in folder path in vRA vs vCenter will lead to unexpected behavior if they are editing/updating the deployment.
   Not to change the folder path in the vCenter for the vRA deployments. Reason being since there is no way from the UI/API to be used to safely sync the folder path change in vRA.
   Discrepancy in folder path in vRA vs vCenter will lead to unexpected behavior if they are editing/updating the deployment.
   
   
   

2. The product does not support changing the folder of the VM. API workaround can provided to help.
   There are two post deployment actions that would be effected if customer change the VM's folder location. ENG provided a sample vRO workflow to help change the VM folder in vCenter and how to up update vRA machines

   1. Rebuild Day 2 Action - the rebuild action uses the VM's Custom Property folderName as where to place the rebuilt VM. Using the Public API /iaas/api/machines/resourceId customer can update the folderName and the next rebuild will put the VM in the folder path assigned to folderName.
      
      
   2. Deployment Update Day 2 Action - for scaling out will either redeploy some of the VM's or put the new or scaled out VM in the original folder location. Changing the folderName on each of the vRA VM's properties will not help with this.

 

 

Additional Information