Use Case: Provisioning with the CA Service Catalog Plug‑in

When you have the CA Service Catalog Plug‑in implemented, you can coordinate the CA Service Catalog team and the Automic system team to enable fully-automated self-service offerings for CA Service Catalog end users. This topic describes a typical service orchestration scenario: an end user submits a request for a new virtual machine (VM) and it is automatically provisioned.

Use the scenario here as a basis to develop and provide the automated self-service fulfillment services that best serve the needs of your organization.

Overview

In this example, you see how the service fulfillment of a request for a new virtual machine (VM) can be automated after the plug-in integration has been implemented. The process works like this:

1. An end user submits a service request in CA Service Catalog for a new VM.
2. The request is automatically fulfilled in Automic Automation.
3. The user is informed about the progress of the request.
4. The request is updated according to the final result:
   • If all goes well, the IP address is sent to the user and the request is closed.
   • If there is a problem, the request is updated with information about the problem.

The following process flow diagram shows how this might work using, for example, VMware vSphere to create the VM, but there are many other ways.

In this diagram, the darker shaded tasks are those that end the process. The process ends when the VM is successfully created, or when it cannot be created for whatever reason. In all cases, the request is updated with a status change or with a note, or both.

Prerequisite Components

To support this scenario, the following tools and components must be installed:

• On the CA Service Catalog side:
  • CA Service Catalog Plug‑in

    This plug-in package contains the JAR file that enables sending service requests to Automic Automation. For complete information about the plug-in, its installation and configuration, and how to use it, see the related PDF guide, which you get when you download the package from our marketplace at https://marketplace.automic.com/.

  For information, see Installation and Implementation in the CA Service Connector Guide.

• On the Automic Automation side:

  Ensure the following action packs are installed. You should see them in the PACKAGES folder in the Explorer sidebar in the Process Assembly perspective.

  • PCK.AUTOMIC_CA_SERVICECATALOG (CA Service Catalog Action Pack)
    This action pack contains actions to enrich service request tickets in CA Service Catalog with comments about the progress of the service fulfillment and to update the request status.
  • PCK.AUTOMIC_RA_REST (REST Action Pack)
    This action pack contains templates for JOBS objects that you can add to Workflows to post and get REST calls and their inputs and payloads.
  • PCK.AUTOMIC_VMWARE_VSPHERE ( VMware vSphere Action Pack)
    This action pack contains actions to build visual workflows to fully automate common VMware vSphere related activities around VM provisioning and more.
    

  Note: If they are not listed in the Explorer sidebar, then you need to download them from our marketplace on https://marketplace.automic.com/ and install them. For instructions about installing an action pack, see Installing Packs in Working with Packs and Plug-ins.

  You find that topic in the Automic Automation online documentation.

Tasks for the Automated Provisioning

To be able to offer automated service request fulfillment to users of the CA Service Catalog, tasks must be completed by the teams for each of the systems.

Tasks on the CA Service Catalog Side

The CA Service Catalog team is responsible for the following:

• Communicating with the Automic Automation team to get the following specifications:
  • The values for the configuration for the AE connection.
  • The input parameters for the Automic Automation Workflow.
• Configuring the connection to the AE. For more information, see Defining a Configuration for the AE Connection in the CA Service Connector Guide.
• Creating the service request forms and assign them to the Service Offerings of the end users. For more information, see Creating a Request Form for an AE Workflow in the CA Service Connector Guide.

  The form must have fields that can map to the Workflow PromptSet variables. These will be posted as inputs with the REST call. For example: VM Name, Number of CPUs, Memory (MB).

Tasks on the Automic Automation Side

The Automic Automation team is responsible for the following:

• Communicating with the CA Service Catalog team to get the CA Service Catalog connection specifications, including the endpoint, a login user and password to be able to update requests.
• Designing the Automic Automation Workflow for the service request fulfillment.