In a recent blog we discussed Aria Automation Approval Policies, this blog will focus on Lease Policies.
Lease Policies are generally used to put an expiration on Aria Automation deployments, things like VMs and Applications. They allow you to destroy your deployments on a schedule, say after 30 days, and reclaim the resources being used for other projects.
As shown above, in Aria Automation - Service Broker - Content & Policies - Policies - Definitions, you will find all Policy Types, including Lease Policies. To create, one click NEW POLICY- Lease Policy.
Here, I've created a 30 Day Policy. The Name and Description are just that, I try to be as descriptive here as possible. Scope allows you to assign the Lease Policy to an entire Organization or specific Projects. In this case, I've assigned my Lease Policy to a project called VM Builds - WDC Datacenter. This will ensure every VM built and deployed into the VM Builds - WDC Datacenter expires in 30 days and will be destroyed.
Criteria provides the ability to further filter the pool against which your Lease Policy is applied, an example might be all VMs in the VM Builds - WDC Datacenter project that don't match a certain criteria, something like this.
Enforcement type is either Hard or Soft, Hard being enforced before Soft. Maximum Lease is the number of days a lease exists until it expires or is renewed. Leases can be renewed until the total lease reaches the number of days defined in the Maximum total lease field. The Grace period is just that, the number of days after a lease expires, before the deployment is destroyed. All of these fields are defined in great detail here.
Lease Policy notifications are emails sent to deployment owners. The SMTP Server being used is configured in Service Broker - Content & Policies - Notifications - Email Server. The first email you'll get will be three days before expiration and will look something like this.
The second email you'll get will be 15-30 minutes before the deployment is destroyed, it'll look like this.
It should also be noted that Lease Policies affect existing deployments. For example, if I have existing VMs that fall into a new Lease Policy Window, they will be destroyed. Here you can see two VMs I deployed five days ago.
I've created a new Lease Policy (one day), that will hit these VMs.
Selecting PREVIEW I can see a preview of policy enforcement.
I finalize the new Policy with CREATE and the existing VMs are destroyed, which you can see in Service Broker - Content & Policies - Policies - Enforcement.
Documentation around notifications can be found here. Lease Policies are a powerful way to reclaim resources with VMware Aria Automation, enjoy!