Delete an orphan object from vRealize Automation Portal

Lately I’ve been working a lot with vCO and vRA, specifically last few days I had a full immersion with Dynamic Types.

I faced a problem where a vRA object (backed up by a vRO dynamic type) failed to deleted because the orchestrator workflow being called by the Advanced Service Designer resource action failed.

For argument sake let’s also say that this workflow was suppose to delete a lot of stuff from a back-end database and a lot of 3rd party systems where that object was previously registered for tracking purpose (for instance a CMDB, an IPAM solution etc etc…).

You now have an orphan object visible within the vRA portal and a messed up database. Well for the database and the external systems the only option you probably have at this point is to manually “decommission” that entity.

But about your orphan object ? Well luckily the solution is pretty simple!

You basically need to create a dummy workflow, that literally does nothing (or perhaps says “Hello World!”), link it to a new new resource action and mark it as type Disposal

Execute the action and, as long as the workflow complete successfully (green checkbox) the orphan will disappear. Nice and easy ah?

I hope it helps!