Manage action plans

Introduction to action plans

To enable more control over cloud operations, users can create no-code action plans that can automatically run tasks on VMs and scaling groups, and to run general tasks, such as sending an email or web hook.

Action plans are an important automation functionality of the platform. They can combine general tasks with tasks that run on VMs and scaling groups in different providers and have multiple triggers including alerts from custom metrics, built-in metrics, budget alerts, and schedules. 

Users can select groups of VMs or scaling groups to run actions based on tags. And multiple action plans can apply to a VM or scaling group.

Display action plans

To display action plans:

1. Go to Control → Action plans

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Display action plans in control view

Create an action plan

Before you create an action plan, consider the elements that you wish to automate with the action plan. Create VMs or scaling groups, fetch metrics, and create alarms and alerts.

To create an action plan:

1. Go to Control → Action plans, and click the + add button 

2. Enter the action plan details

   Open

   

   Create action plan: general information

3. Go to Actions to add actions: 

   1. Click the + add button

   2. Select the action Type: general action, VM, scaling group, VMs by tags, scaling groups by tags

   3. If you are selecting by tags, then enter the tag filter.
      See Search for resources by tag and filter search 

   4. Enter action details

      1. Decrease CPU/RAM: you cannot use this with hot-reconfigure and you must check that the OS is compatible

      2. Instance: Name for Instance (clone) template. The platform will append the date to the name supplied

      3. Webhook action - Expected HTTP status code: If this status code is returned, continue running the action plan. Default: 204 No Content

      4. Email action - To, CC: Enter email addresses as a comma separated list

          

         For more details, see Action plan actions table and Webhook actions table below.

          

4. Put the actions in run order using the arrow buttons

To run the action plan automatically, go to the Triggers tab and create an alert or schedule trigger. 

Action plan actions table

Webhook action attributes table

Run an action plan now

To run an action plan immediately to test it, do these steps:

1. Go to Control → Action plans

2. Select the action plan 

3. On the Actions pane, click the Run action plan button  

Abiquo recommends that you run an action plan manually to test it before you create a trigger to run it automatically.

Create a trigger for an action plan

The platform supports two types of triggers to run action plans: Alerts and Schedules.

To run your action plan based on metrics, select an existing alert with these steps:

1. Go to Control → Action plans

2. Select an action plan

3. Below the Alerts panel, click the + add button

4. Select an alert. For details about creating an alert, see Manage alerts. 

To run your action plan automatically at selected dates and times, cre

ate a schedule trigger with these steps:

1. Go to Control → Action plans

2. Select an action plan

3. Below the Schedules panel, click the + add button

4. Enter the details of the schedule using the calendar or time and repeat interval as described below

 To run the action plan at intervals of a fixed number of seconds within a set timeframe:

1. Select an Interval schedule

2. Enter the following parameters

   1. Interval seconds: the number of seconds from when the action plan execution starts to when it will start again

   2. Repeat count: the number of times to run the action plan. A value of 0 means repeat forever

   3. Start time: date and time

   4. End time: date and time

After you create an interval schedule, the platform will display the execution count of how many times the action plan has run. If the repeat count is 0, the execution count is null.

To run the action plan using a Cron-type schedule:

1. Select an Advanced schedule

2. Use the calendar selector.

Delete an action plan

If you delete an action plan, Abiquo will also delete the schedule associated with that action plan.