Adding Tags to your VMs in VCF Automation Blueprints

I've created various Blueprints in my VCF Automation environment, addressing different customer demands.

I'd like users deploying VMs via the Generic VM Blueprint to add vSphere Tags to their deployments, this is what I did. All screenshots in this blog are taken from VCFA 8.18.1.

I'll be including code snippets below, but if you'd like to have the full Bluepring, you can download it here.

First, I ask the user for several inputs: VM Name, vCPU, Memory, OS, IP, etc.

inputs:

vmname:

type: string

description: VM Name (shortname)

title: VM Name (shortname)

vcpuCount:

type: integer

description: Number of vCPUs

title: vCPU being requested

default: 2

minimum: 2

maximum: 32

totalMemoryMB:

type: integer

description: Memory in MB

title: Memory being requested (MB)

default: 4096

minimum: 4096

maximum: 32768

enum:

- 4096

- 8192

- 12288

- 16384

- 20480

- 24576

- 28672

- 32768

os:

type: string

description: OS

title: OS for VM

default: Windows 2022

enum:

- CentOS Linux 7

- CentOS Linux 8

- Debian Linux 12

- Oracle Linux 9

- RHEL 7

- Rocky Linux 9

- Windows 2022

- Windows 2025

ip:

type: string

description: IP of VM

title: IP of VM

I then ask the user for metadata: VM Owner, Category, and Description. I will use these to create VM Tags.

owner:

type: string

description: Owner of VM (please use email address)

title: Owner of VM (please use email address)

category:

type: string

description: Category of VM

title: Category of VM

default: TEST

enum:

- TEST

- DEVELOPMENT

- PRODUCTION

description:

type: string

description: Description of the VM

title: Description of the VM

Once I have these inputs from the user, I use them in my VM object via properties - tags, like this.

Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1:

type: Cloud.vSphere.Machine

properties:

image: ${input.os}

cpuCount: ${input.vcpuCount}

totalMemoryMB: ${input.totalMemoryMB}

name: ${input.vmname}

tags:

- key: owner

value: ${input.owner}

- key: environment

value: ${input.category}

- key: description

value: ${input.description}

constraints:

- tag: account:alderstead.vcfops.lab / Datacenter-1

networks:

- network: ${resource.Cloud_Network_1.id}

assignment: static

ip_addresses: ${input.ip}

I've also skinned this Blueprint with a Custom Form that looks like this.

If you'd like this Custom Form you can download it here. As you can see I added some helper text, used Regular Expression Constraints to ensure users enter properly formed data, and Text Area to allow for free-form content. Let's give it a run.

The last three fields are the ones that will be used to create VM Tags. Once the form is complete, click SUBMIT.

We can watch our progress here, but also over in vCenter.

There's our VM with the Tags we specified at request time! Tags can be used for all sorts of use cases, hope this was helpful!