vRA Integration with Microsoft Azure

There are lot of articles and information already available around this topic. But I thought will do this myself in my way.

In this blog I will talk about deploy/manage Azure workload from vRealize automation Portal. This is not a very often seen used case in any organization but definitely something good to learn. I used MS Azure Public Cloud and vRA 7.3 for this blog. Similar thing can be achieved using Azure Stack as well, but I am yet to explore that option. vRA 7.2 is also fully supported for this.

What do we need to get started?

A subscription to Azure portal. You can use the trial one that gives you about $13K credit to play around Azure portal. Once you have that we need to setup below items and record their names and IDs.

• Subscription ID
• Tenant ID
• Storage Account
• Resource Group
• Location
• Virtual Network
• Client Application ID
• Client Application Secret Key
• Virtual Machine Image

And also we need a vRealize Automation environment atleast installed and ready.

Configure Azure

Subscription and Tenant ID

You can get this from Azure CLI commands also. See Azure CLI section below.

1. Assuming you have subscribed the Azure and you have logged in to the Portal. You should see you Dashboard with the Credit Limit and Days remaining for trial.

Click on the 'Billing' tab on the left side bottom.

2. This will open the page where you can see the Subscription details. Note down the Subscription ID.

3. Click on the Help (?) button on the top right. This will give you the Tenant ID. Record it somewhere.

Storage Account

4. Click on the Storage accounts tab on the left side. Click on the Create Storage Account if you don't have any account at all. You can also click on +Add button.

5. It will now open a Form type of page to enter the details. Enter the required details. Remember there are certain mandatory items to be filled (with red astrix).

Once done click Create.

6. You will see your Storage account created successfully.

7. You can click on the Storage Account name and see the details.

Virtual Network

8. Now lets create the Virtual Network. Click on the Create Virtual network if you don't have any account at all. You can also click on +Add button.

9. Like previous step this will also open a Form to fill out the details. Fill the details as per your choice.

Once done click Create.

10. You can see the Virtual Network created.

11. Click on the newly created network to see the details.

App Registration

12. Click on the Azure Active Directory on the left and then click on App Registration.

13. Give your app a name and provide a URL to Sign-On (it could be anything but just for sake of test you can enter vRA URL).

Click Create.

14. Once Application is created, make sure to note down the Application ID. Click on it to open next page.

Generate Key

15. Click on Keys. Provide a Description and Expiry duration. Click Save. There will be a Key Value generated.

Note: Do not close this page without recording the Key Value.

Application Permissions

16. Once you have saved the Key Value then click on Required permissions → Click Add → Select an API → Select Windows Azure Service Management API.

17. Now Select permission. Under Application Permissions choose Access Azure Service Management as organization users.

18. Once done successfully it should look something like this.

19. You can verify the permissions with step 17 above as below.

Access Control

20. Now finally we need to setup the Access control to connect AD application we just created in previous to Azure subscription. Click on the Subscription.

21. Then click your Free trial account → Access control (IAM) → Add → Select the Role 'Contributor' → Search your application and Select it.

Click Save.

22. Now you should be able to see the newly presented access & Role for your Application.

Azure CLI

At this point take a deep breadth if all went well. Now the last thing we need is the VM Image from where the VM will deploy. For this you can either use Windows Powershell or Azure CLI.

Also you can create a VM in Azure and save it as Image. That Image can also be used for deployment.

More information on Azure CLI installation can be found here. Azure CLI

Once you have a Linux server up and ready run these commands assuming you have RHEL or CentOS.

a. Install Python if you don't have it already.

# yum install python

b. Install the Pre-requisites,

For CentOS 7.1 or 7.2

# sudo yum check-update; sudo yum install -y gcc libffi-devel python-devel openssl-devel
For RedHat 7.2

# sudo yum check-update; sudo yum install -y gcc libffi-devel python-devel openssl-devel

c. Install the CLI with one curl command

# curl -L https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCli | bash

d. Restart your command shell for changes to take effect.

# exec -l $SHELL

e. Run the CLI from the command prompt once again to update the az components.

# curl -L https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCli | bash


Lets get the VM Image.

1. Goto /root/bin folder.

# cd /root/bin

Run the 'az' command. all the azure commands starts with 'az'.

# az

2. You will see a list of commands available. 

3.  You need to first login to Azure Subscription.

#az login

Once you enter the command, it will provide you the URL and a key to authenticate. Open the Web Browser and enter the URL, and follow the instructions.

↓↓↓↓↓↓

↓↓↓↓↓↓

After successful authentication you will see the Subscription details. This will also mean that you have successfully logged into your Azure Subscription.

You can also type # az account list to see the account details.

4. Set the Account to 'Free Trial'.

5. Run this command to see the Images available in the Location. This is for Linux (Ubuntu).

# az vm image list --location SouthIndia --publisher Canonical --offer UbuntuServer -sku 16.04-LTS

Remember this command can be broken down into pieces to see other Publishers and SKUs.

6. Another Example for Windows Images.

Setup vRealize Automation

At this point you should have the below Azure information ready to incorporate into vRA.

• Subscription ID
• Tenant ID
• Storage Account
• Resource Group
• Location
• Virtual Network
• Client Application ID
• Client Application Secret Key
• Virtual Machine Image

1. Login to your vRA and goto Administration → vRO Configuration → Endpoint → Plug-in → Select Azure from drop down.

2. Give it a Name and Description.

3.  Enter the details as shown in the picture.

Click Finish.

4.  Create a Reservation for Azure. Click on Infrastructure → Reservation → New → Azure

5. Provide a Name and Select the BG. Set Priority and Enable the Reservation.

6. Click Next or Select Resources tab → Set the details as below in picture. 

7. Click on Network tab and add the Virtual Network from Azure. However, I did not add this here.

8. Create the Blueprint. Click on Design → Blueprints → New

9. Drag the Azure Machine type Blueprint to the Canvas. Add a Name.

10. In Build Information, select the Location from the Drop Down and enter the VM Image that we got from the Azure CLI.

11.  Under the same tab 'Build Information' give the Authentication details that we setup in the Azure. Select the Instant Size, I choose the smallest one just for the test.

12.  Under Machine Resource, give the Azure Resource Group name.

13.  Under Storage provide the Azure Storage account name.

14. Under Network you can provide the vNet Name and Subnet Name. Since I didn't give this information in Reservations, so I left it blank here as well.

Click Finish.

15. Publish the Blueprint.

16. Create the Catalog for it. I haven't shown how to create these items in details since these are very straight forward steps.

a. Create a Service.

b. Attach this Service to Catalog.

c. Create Entitlement.

17. Now lets request a Machine from the vRA Catalog.

18. Enter the Description and Click Submit.

19.  It will now start to deploy a VM in Azure.

20. The Request is now successful in vRA.

21. We can see the vramachine6 is deployed in the Items.

22.  In Azure Virtual Machines we can see the VM is fully deployed and ready.

23. You can click on the VM to see the detailed view. Remember VM will not have the Public IP assigned to it. This task will have to be done manually.

24. Once the VM is deployed there are few things you can do through Action Itemas, example, Manage Public IP, Delete, Stop, etc...