Refreshing service instances

You can refresh data for service instances, to ensure that you are always working with current data.

For example, suppose that a cloud service provider uses both BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management and VMware vCloud Director to provide cloud services to its customers. The cloud administrator might change the virtual machine configuration (for example, power on, power off, add or remove CPU, add or remove memory, or update OS patches or disks) from the VMware vCenter portal. By refreshing the service instance, you ensure that those updates are synchronized in the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management portal.

This topic contains the following sections:

The following BMC Communities video (4:51) describes how to refresh service and server instances in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management to ensure that you are always working with the most current data.

https://youtu.be/AqeG9kiO7wg

What gets updated?

When you refresh a service instance or server, the following properties are updated:

CPU
Memory
Power state
OS information
Disk Information (Excluding a change to the target datastore)
The provisioned deployment and functional model (for the service offering instance).
IP address (Only DHCP or dynamic IP address)

Considerations when refreshing a service instance

OS synchronization is supported only if the actual server is powered on.
The OS Manufacturer, minor version, and patch level are synchronized for non-Linux/AIX guests only (that is, Microsoft Windows platforms only).
Virtual cluster/virtual host/virtual resource pool is synchronized for VMware only.
The provisioned deployment model is updated only if the service is synchronized. The provisioned deployment model is not synchronized if only the server is synchronized.
The virtualization platforms supported are VMware, vCloud, Amazon EC2, Hyper-V, IBM, and Citrix XenServer.
When you delete a server from BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management and perform a refresh of a service or a server, the server is deleted and is no longer available in the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Console, under My Instances > Server. Note the following considerations after deleting a server from BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management and perform a refresh:
- The server is deleted from the server under Services, however the services are available and are not deleted.
- If you perform a refresh operation immediately after completion of another refresh operation, the operation fails.
Only dynamic or DHCP IP addresses changes are refreshed. Static IP addresses, even if changed, do not get reflected. For more information, see To refresh IP addresses when the NIC is associated with a Load Balancer, a Firewall Rule, or a Network Path.

To refresh a service

From the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration Console, click the vertical Workspaces menu on the left side of the window and select Service Instances. The BMC My Cloud Services Console is displayed along with all of the active service requests.
Under Services, do one of the following:

- Click Synchronize .
- Click the Operator Action icon , and select Synchronize.
  Note
  
  When you click Synchronize, if any VM is deleted from the virtual center, the Synchronize operation fails with the following error. The user must then manually decomission the server/service:
  Could not locate the virtual guest virtualGuestName on target virtualization platform.

To refresh a server

From the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration Console, click the vertical Workspaces menu on the left side of the window and select Service Instances. The BMC My Cloud Services Console is displayed along with all of the active service requests.
Click the Servers tab.
Under Servers, do one of the following:

- Click the Synchronize icon .
- Click the Operator Action icon , and select Synchronize.
  
  Note
  
  When you click Synchronize, if any VM is deleted from the virtual center, the Synchronize operation fails with the following error. The user must then manually decomission the server/service:
  Could not locate the virtual guest virtualGuestName on target virtualization platform.

To refresh IP addresses when the NIC is associated with a Load Balancer, a Firewall Rule, or a Network Path

If the server is in a power off state, the synchronize action is successful however, changes to IP addresses are not updated. If the NIC is associated with a Load Balancer, a Firewall Rule, or a Network Path, by default the IP address changes are not updated.

To update the IP address you must change the AccessAttributeValue in the providers.json file.

To make changes to the providers.json file:

Locate the following code in the providers.json file.

{
    "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttributeValue",
    "accessAttribute" : {
      "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttribute",
      "datatype" : "BOOLEAN",
      "description" : "force IPAddress Refresh, irrespective of LB/FW/NP associations",
      "guid" : "fbaf1131-c783-4b0c-8ab0-9dfd10086135",
      "isOptional" : true,
      "isPassword" : false,
      "modifiableWithoutRestart" : false,
      "name" : "forceIPRefresh"
    },
    "attributeValue" : "false",
    "description" : "force IPAddress Refresh, irrespective of LB/FW/NP associations",
    "guid" : "9cb6d304-752a-4b65-9b99-46e4f071637d",
    "name" : "forceIPRefresh"
  }

Set the attributeValue to true.
The IP addresses are updated even if the NIC is associated with a Load Balancer, a Firewall Rule, or a Network Path.