How to create “Network Selection” drop-down in vRealize Automation 6.2

It’s been a while since I blogged, on the work front things are hectic and I am involved in many PoC’s for vRA, fun times.

I created this step by step guide for a very simple ask from a customer of creating a drop-down menu item in the service request form that allows the selection of networks in vRA 6.2.

This of course can be enhanced in different directions like displaying the networks “friendly names” instead of the actual port group names, or to populate the drop-down based on another selection for example selecting a specific datacenter will populate the right networks in the network selection drop-down etc, I will sure to create follow up posts with that.

Ok, here we go:

Once we have vRA installed and configured with reservations, some blueprints etc follow the steps below:

1. Under Infrastructure/reservations go into your reservation and make sure the networks you want to allow access to are checked

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Network reservations

2. Go to Infrastructure/Blueprints/build profiles and create a new property definition with the following parameters:
   1. Name – VirtualMachine.Network0.Name
   2. Display name – Select network (this is what the user sees
   3. Control type – Drop down
   4. Required – usually will be set to “yes”

Accept the new property and then click on “edit” under “Property attribute”

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Property Dictionary

3. In the property attribute create a new one and input the following parameters:
   1. Type – Valuelist
   2. Name – Networks (friendly name)
   3. Value – the names of the networks (port groups) you allow for user selection, comma separated

Save it

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Edit Attribute

4. To make this property reusable easily we will create a “Build profile”, under Infrastructure/Blueprints/Build profiles create a new Build profile

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Build profiles page

5. Input the following parameters :
   1. Name – Network Selection (easily recognizable name for the property)
   2. Description – Allows users to select network to attach
   3. Create a new property with the following parameters:
      1. Name  – VirtualMachine.Network0.Name
      2. Value –

• Prompt user – yes (checked)

Save this property

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Build profiles 2

6. Go into each blueprint that you want to allow the network selection and under the “Properties” tab check the newly created ”Network Selection”  build profile

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Blueprint

7. When the user requests the services that have this profile in will see the dropdown and can select the network that he/she would like to connect to

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Network Selection drop-down

There you go, I hope this helps anyone

Niran