VCF Operations Automation Central Updates

VCF Operations Automation Central has been around since 8.4 and we've discussed it several times previously:

• VMware vRealize Operations Automation Central

• VMware Aria Operations 8.12: What's New with Automation Central

• VCF Operations 9.1 Automation Central Enhancements for VM Snapshot Deletion

There was a change introduced in 9.1 that don't appear to be in the Release Notes, so thought I'd cover them here. It's around the PREVIEW SCOPE function.

In VCF Operations 9.0.x and earlier, the PREVIEW SCOPE button would show all VMs that were scoped into the Job in the steps 2 and 3. For example, here is an Operations 9.0.2 instance showing the PREVIEW SCOPE for a VM Snapshot Delete Job of Snapshots older than 30 days for all VMs in my vCenter.

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I scheduled this same Job in 9.1.1 and PREVIEW SCOPE shows as follows:

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Note that PREVIEW SCOPE shows only 9 VMs here. Which is because there are only 9 VMs in my environment with Snapshots that are older than 30 days.

The change here (9.1 and newer) is that PREVIEW SCOPE is now applying the qualifying logic, in this case VMs with Snapshots older than 30 days.

There are a couple other things to note:

• Automation Central Jobs don't run unless there are qualifying VMs (this hasn't changed). You won't see anything in your Automation Central History tab unless the Job actually runs.

• If you've configured email notifications on Automation Central Jobs, you still get an email 2 hours before a scheduled Job run, even if it doesn't actually run.

• There is a known bug that prevents PREVIEW SCOPE from working in 9.1.1 and later when editing a Job with a start time in the past. This is fixed in an upcoming release.