Here I am showing how you import virtual machines from vSphere (not managed by any vRA instance) and pull them into vRA managed by a user.
There are a few things you need to prepare – and here I assume that this is already done
- You run vRealize Automation 7.0.1 – Bulk Import is broken in GA !!
- You have a converged Blueprint with only a single component. It must not even have a network configured
- Networks attached to the unmanaged machines are available in vRA
- If the VMs using static IPs, the IP needed is added to the IP Pool and available. Here you can see I simply added an additional IP Pool with the range of the VMs to be imported.
- A data collection has finished successfully
Here you can see that I have four VMs (Bulk-01 / 02 / 03 / 04) .. these are not managed by any vRA instance – you can pretty much see that by the fact they don’t have a prefix in the virtual machine name. Imported VMs do not automatically get a prefix and won’t be renamed !
Above VMs have the following IPs and as mentioned – they need to be made available
- Bulk-01
- 10.10.0.104
- Bulk-02
- 10.10.0.172
- Bulk-03
- 10.10.0.173
- Bulk-04
- 10.10.0.174
Now navigate to Infrastructure > Administration > Bulk Imports
Click 
Enter here the details you want the VMs to be mapped against. All four VMs to be imported are Server 2012R2 machines and you can see I created a Blueprint for the Bulk Import specifically.
Click OK
You should now receive a CSV file – save it
Once you saved the file, you need to edit it. A straight import is unlikely to work. Each VM imported will need to have a unique name but by default, all exported VMs have the same Deployment ID (which really is the new name of the VM)
UNNAMED_DEPLOYMENT
Adding multiple VMs to the same Deployment ID is not supported so it needs renaming.
Open the file with for example notepad
Change the names of the VM – can be tedious if you got a LOT of VMs to import. Here I changed
UNNAMED_DEPLOYMENT
to
Bulk-01
to match its current name in vCenter – the new name will be the name displayed in vRA under Items
Ensure you change the Import from Yes to No if you don’t want them imported. Here for example I got an vRealize Infrastructure Navigator appliance and an NSX Edge – which I certainly don’t want to manage through vRA.
As previously mentioned – I already reserved IPs for the imported VMs. Now add a custom property to include the IP
,VirtualMachine.Network0.Address, A.B.C.D, HOP
Note: The HOP string sets the visibility of the property. This default property is removed from the virtual
machine after a successful import.
Now close / save the CSV.
If you got the export view in vRA still open, cancel it
Click New
Give the task a name and Browse for the CSV – you can run a test import to ensure the CSV file is solid.
Make sure the test completed successfully
Either delete the test import or create a new task with a different name
Now ensure the import runs through – here you can see the status changing eventually to Registering
And finishes
Go to Managed Machines
There you can also follow the detailed progress
And all VMs should finish importing
Under Items you should now see the imported VMs
And you can also confirm the IP address which is now managed by vRA – making sure it matches the IP of the VM in vCenter and vRA.
Another check you can perform is the Network Profile IP Range configured and ensure that the IP has been assigned and removed from the pool of available IPs
That’s it – you now ‘Bulk-Imported VMs’. Bear in mind now – if you delete this VM from within vRA – it WILL be deleted physically from vCenter.
The VMs now have a new annotation as well, showing that the VM is now managed
