Broadcom (VMware) – SimplyGeek

VCF Operations Orchestrator: Auto-Document Your Actions with Ease

I spend a significant amount of time developing code for VCF Operations Orchestrator, and while I follow a strict and structured development process, documentation often falls behind. Keeping documentation up to date is an ongoing challenge as it’s difficult to maintain and keep up with frequent code changes. To solve this, I decided it was time to automate the documentation process and created a script to achieve this. When I set out to build this solution, I had a clear set of requirements I wanted it to meet: You can find my documentation tool here: vcf-operations-orchestrator-doc-generator, along with instructions on...

3 July 2025

VCF Operations Orchestrator: Why I Write Actions and Not Workflows (Mostly)

This might be a controversial stance, but if you’ve reviewed any of my VCF Operations Orchestrator code, you’ll notice that 99% of it is written as Actions. I take this approach because it enables me to write “pure” JavaScript code that is easier to read, maintain, and integrate with modern development tools such as linters, unit testing frameworks, and code analysers. Workflows are a visual tool that provides a drag-and-drop interface used to develop automation flows without writing (much) code. It was originally intended for system administrators and infrastructure teams, who might not be traditional developers, to automate tasks on...

1 July 2025

Development / JavaScript / Broadcom (VMware) / VMware Cloud Foundation / VCF Automation / VCF Operations Orchestrator

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Process locking made easy in VCF Operations Orchestrator, featuring automatic unlock

VCF Operations Orchestrator has a built-in locking semaphore provided by the LockingSystem class. When a lock is created, the workflow is placed into a waiting state, and any additional executions of the workflow will be placed in a queue until the lock is released. Locking is a useful technique that can help protect the consistency of data or prevent multiple processes from updating a resource at the same time. This is especially important when workflows run concurrently and update the same resources. LockingSystem provides the method ‘lock‘ that will attempt to acquire a lock for a given lockId and owner....

24 June 2025

Broadcom (VMware) / VCF Operations Orchestrator

Empower VCF Operations Orchestrator API integration with HttpRestClient

VCF Operations Orchestrator allows you to define endpoints for API integration in the inventory as RestHosts using the HTTP-REST plugin. Once a RestHost is defined, it is then possible to authenticate and perform HTTP web requests on the endpoint (GET, POST, etc). HttpRestClient is designed to enhance this experience by doing all the heavy lifting when performing these requests, such as handling of different content types, error handling and retry logic. Here are some of the benefits and features provided by the HttpRestClient: The HttpRestClient serves as the backbone for API integration between VCF Operations Orchestrator and the API endpoint...

24 June 2025

Development / JavaScript / Broadcom (VMware) / VMware Cloud Foundation / VCF Operations Orchestrator

Logger for better Logs in VCF Operations Orchestrator

VCF Automation Orchestrator has a limitation with console logging because there is no way to dynamically output the name of an action or sub-workflow. The statement this.workflow.name can be used to get the name of a top-level workflow, but the same value would be used for all sub-workflows and Actions. Several years ago, I wrote a post on my Simplygeek blog, demonstrating my solution to this problem. I still believe this is the best option available and will work without limitations. My solution was to create a Logger class that can be imported into every Action and Workflow. This method...

24 June 2025

Broadcom (VMware) / VMware Cloud Foundation / VCF Operations Orchestrator

VCF Automation – Native Git Integration vs Alternatives

VCF Automation integration with a Git solution like GitHub or Gitlab is a conversation that has come up a lot over the years, and again recently. The suggestion is often to use the native integration options provided with the product, which are fine for their intended use case, but many misconceptions lead to disappointment. It’s important to understand what content can be managed from a Git repository using the native functionality before any decision-making takes place. I will address these in this post and help to understand what can be achieved and the available alternatives (and in many cases, necessities)....

24 June 2025

Development / Git / Broadcom (VMware) / VMware Cloud Foundation / VCF Automation / VCF Operations Orchestrator

VCF Automation – Build Tools for VMware Aria – Useful Maven Command Reference

This series has focused on getting up and running with the Build Tools and creating basic projects. In this post, I will demonstrate all the available Maven commands and some additional parameters that can be used. This page can also be used as a useful Maven command reference. Creating Projects The following sections provide all the commands for creating the various project types. In all of the examples, you can substitute groupId and artifactId with your own values. The archetypeVersion is the desired version of the Build Tools (if these are new projects, use the latest available). TypeScript Project A...

24 June 2025

VCF Operations Orchestrator / Build Tools for VMware Aria / Development / Maven / Broadcom (VMware) / VMware Cloud Foundation / VCF Automation

VCF Automation – Build Tools for VMware Aria – Visual Studio Code Integration

The Build Tools for VMware Aria project has developed an Extension for Visual Studio Code that provides native integration directly in the IDE. Using VSCode with this extension will provide the following features when developing code for your VCF Automation environment: I have had quite a few issues with the plugin and found that it provides limited support. The biggest benefit of using the Build Tools is that the code can be managed in VSCode to begin with. Install the vRealize Developer Tools extension for Visual Studio Code The vRealize Developer Tools extension for Visual Studio Code can be installed...

24 June 2025

VCF Operations Orchestrator / Build Tools for VMware Aria / Development / Visual Studio Code / Broadcom (VMware) / VMware Cloud Foundation / VCF Automation