VMWare vRealize Automation Cloud Image Profiles lessons learned

Over the last month I’ve spend most of my time trying to replicate Sam McGeown’s Build, test and release VM images with vRealize Automation Code Stream and Packer in vRealize Automation Cloud. One of the tasks is to create or update an Image Profile. The following article details some of the things I’ve learned.

First off, the Image Mappings shown in the UI cannot be updated via the API directly. The API allows you create, change and delete Image Profiles. An Image Profile contains the Image Mappings and is tied to a Region.

For example, in this image the IaC Image Mappings are displayed.

Here, some of same Image Mappings as seen when you GET the Image Profile by id.

{
"imageMapping": {
"mapping": {
"IaC-build-test-patch": {
"id": "8fc331632163f53fd0c66e0407495504295b4c1c",
"name": "",
"description": "Template: vSphere-CentOS8-CUSTOM-2020.09.25.181019"
},
"IaC-prod-profile": {
"id": "2e2d31be93c59531d2c1eeeadc58f68b66174559",
"name": "",
"description": "Template: vSphere-CentOS8-CUSTOM-2020.09.25.144314"
},
"IaC-test-profile": {
"id": "842c91f05185978d62d201df3b47d1505cf3fea3",
"name": "",
"description": "Generic CentOS 7 template with cloud-init installed and VM hardware version 13 (compatible with ESXi 6.5 or greater)."
}
}
},
"regionId": "71cecc477594a67558b9d5xxxxxxx",
"name": "IaC-build-test-profile",
"description": "Packer build image for testing"
}

But how do you get the Image Profile Id? I ended up using a filter based on the externalRegionId (I used another filtered search to find the externalRegionId by Region Name).

https://api.mgmt.cloud.vmware.com/iaas/api/image-profiles?$filter=externalRegionId eq 'Datacenter:datacenter-xyz'

This returned the following payload (Cleaned up bit). I reference this later as cloudAccountJson.

{
"content": [
{
"imageMappings": {
"mapping": {
"IaC-prod-profile": {
...
},
"IaC-build-test-patch": {
...
},
"IaC-test-profile": {
...
}
},
"externalRegionId": "",
...
},
"externalRegionId": "Datacenter:datacenter-xyz",
...
"name": "IaC-build-test-profile",
"description": "Packer build image for testing",
"id": "fa57fef8-5d0e-494b-b299-7e4a9030ac11-71cecc477594a67558b9d5f056260",
...
],
"totalElements": 1,
"numberOfElements": 1
}

The id will be used later to update (PATCH) the Image Profile.

Now to build the PATCH body to update the Profile. The API has the following body example.

{ "name": "string", "description": "string", "imageMapping": "{ \"ubuntu\": { \"id\": \"9e49\", \"name\": \"ami-ubuntu-16.04-1.9.1-00-1516139717\"}, \"coreos\": { \"id\": \"9e50\", \"name\": \"ami-coreos-26.04-1.9.1-00-543254235\"}}", "regionId": "9e49" }

Then using cloudAccountJson returned previously, I built a new body using the following (partial) code (I couldn’t get the formatting right, hence the image.)

Now some gotcha’s.

First, remember that the image mappings are tied to the region. You will loose any Image Mappings NOT included in the POST/PATCH Body. Make sure you back up the Image Profile settings (Do a get by Image Profile Id) before attempting to change the mappings via the API.

Secondly, an Image Profile does not have a name by default. You need to set this via the API. Why would you need it? Well you may want to find the Image Profile by name later. My current customer creates new customer Image Profiles via the API and uses a ‘tag’ like naming convention.

Thirdly, I’ve experienced several 500 errors when interfacing with the vRA Cloud API. The out of box Code Stream REST tasks do not retry. I ended up writing python custom integrations as a work around. These retry until receiving the correct response code (I’ve seen up to 15 500 errors before getting a 200).

This is just one thing I’ve learned about the vRA Cloud API, and Code Stream. I’ll post more as I have time.